


The Hound, the Healer, and the Hunt

by Autodidact, LittleMagpie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Content Warnings By Chapter, Gender Dysphoria, Gore, Horror, Hunter Jonathan Fanshawe, Hurt/Comfort, Illustrated, M/M, Monster Boyfriends, Non-Binary Barnabas Bennett, Trans Character, Trans Jonathan Fanshawe, Trans Male Character, Werewolf Barnabas Bennett, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 07:13:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 49,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26968042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Autodidact/pseuds/Autodidact, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMagpie/pseuds/LittleMagpie
Summary: At the height of an autumn full moon, Barnabas Bennett and Jonathan Fanshawe each bring their own secrets to the woods, and find a partnership there greater than the sum of its parts.
Relationships: Barnabas Bennett/Jonah Magnus, Barnabas Bennett/Jonathan Fanshawe, Jonathan Fanshawe/Jonah Magnus
Comments: 7
Kudos: 27
Collections: Associated Articles Regarding One Jonah Magnus





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And I shudder at the thought of your  
>  Poor empty hunter's pouch  
>  So I'll keep the wind from your barrel  
>  And bless the roof of your house._  
>  —Tom Waits, _Just the Right Bullets_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click to view content warnings.

“Have you heard the rumours, Jonathan? About the beast out in the country?”

Jonathan Fanshawe, mid-way through cutting into his lamb chop, looks up from his plate and into the face of Jonah Magnus. They are catching up over dinner in the absence of any recent grand social events. Sometimes Jonah needles him into keeping in the practice of socializing; other times, Jonathan will write to Jonah asking for his company, because he never leaves a letter unread. This evening, Jonah was the one to ask him out, and the wine has put him in fine spirits, chatty and coy.

It’s entertaining. Jonathan would be able to appreciate it more in silence, away from the press of people in the tavern, but he doesn't mind. “I can’t say I have.”

“Pity. I hoped you would.” Jonah pauses for a moment, letting the anticipation build and allowing him to gather his thoughts. “If you find anyone who _has_ had an encounter with the creature, send them my way, would you? Or, well,” and he wickedly smiles, teeth shining in the lamplight, “feel free to drop by yourself, should _you_ happen to encounter it.”

Jonathan attempts to ply him with more wine, topping off his glass. He refills his own to brace himself; to hold something red and strong in his mouth. “What do the rumours say?”

“Mm. _Remarkably_ similar things to those incidents reported before. Inhuman wailing, savaged sheep and cattle, property damage, et cetera. All happening by the light of the full moon.” Jonah picks up his glass and cocks his head inquiringly. “I thought you said you buried that problem.”

“I did.” At a great cost of time and blood, but Jonah knew that already. “These attacks—are they occurring in the same area?”

“More or less. As I said, I don’t have any proper reports yet.”

It is then that Jonathan notices the strength of the grip on his dining-knife and the dig of it into his palm. He makes the conscious decision to uncurl his fingers and set the cutlery flat upon the table. “Is there anything else you know?”

“No bodies yet. Or no bodies _found_ yet. If you’re lucky, you might just be able to save a few lives outside of your treatments!” 

Jonathan listens to Jonah chuckle at his own joke. It’s entertaining, but his mind is elsewhere: already he is planning his preparations before the next full moon. He thinks of the weight of weapons in his hands; of the nighttime chill and silence. “Thank you, Jonah.”

“Any time. Happy hunting.”

It starts as it always does, with a strange and restless ache in the long bones of Barnabas’ body, the peculiar sensation of itching inside of his flesh that begins, whether he likes it or not, the moment the ghost of the full moon is high in the midday sky. He has never been good at keeping time, but the rest of the day must be resolved quickly after he does notice; the irritable kindling energy of it buoys him up, carrying him up and over the tasks and necessities of the day with a sort of distance that means he does not truly feel them, only brushes over the tops of them with a sort of bewildered growing horror at himself.

He knows well enough by now what is happening. The crisp autumn evening is full of the soft scatter of blowing leaves, and he feels _pursued_ by them as the light fades and the sun sinks toward the horizon; they rattle and chuckle after him down the empty road as the shadows lengthen behind him into long-limbed ash-violet spectres. Barnabas does not dare to stop and talk with anyone in his hurry to make his way out of the city. The first time he felt this way—after he’d had the ill-fated encounter with the enormous wolf while he’d been out on a fox hunt—he woke up covered in blood and full of horror with the dawn, his clothes ruined and his mouth tasting of copper and rust, and Barnabas burned with shame and terror. He has not dared to tell anyone, most especially since he has not heard the answering cry of another wolf in months.

He does not know whether solitude is a comfort or not.

The cottage in the woods must have been a hunting cottage at one point, judging from the mounted animals on the inner walls and the musty furs draped across the furniture he never uses. Barnabas does not understand why it feels so comfortingly like home when he has only ever felt the misery of the monthly change in it, but as the sturdy oak door thumps closed behind him, relief washes over him in a wave so immense he slumps slightly against it, palms flattening against the wood as he tries to draw in a steadying breath. Here, he is as safe as he can be. In the months he has been coming to this secluded little cabin he has only woken twice anywhere else—and only once was that in danger of being seen.

Still, Barnabas is trembling as he feels the deep and splintered grooves on the inside of the door’s surface against his sweating back. Soon it— _he,_ he reminds himself wretchedly—will add to it in a frantic bid to escape the confines of the cottage, and as always, he will succeed, losing himself in the hot silver mist that wraps around his senses and the wild instinctive profusion of scent and taste and _need._

Jonathan would have liked to leave town in the late afternoon before sunset hit: take a carriage out to drop him off at the edge of the woods and make his way on foot. But one of the problems with the medical profession is the urgency of the work, at times—he’d been called out to an accident at a construction site, where three different men had required his attention. He cannot complain, for he needs the work, even if all the while he ached to go home to finish up his preparations.

A couple of days ago, Jonathan made his way out of town with a jar, a pistol, and a pry-bar. The cottage that he’d tracked the great wolf to, all those many months ago, was not in the same condition as last he'd seen it. There were new clothes in the wardrobe; new scratches on the walls. A _gentleman_ now used this space, evidently.

So Jonathan found the water basin and coated the bottom with as much silver nitrate, ground up into a fine powder, as he dared to keep its presence undetectable to a casual glance. If there were a well on the property he would pour the rest in there, but this home is river-fed. He did manage to find a canteen in the kitchen space and poured the remaining powder into there instead, using a sheet of journal-paper as a funnel.

If the person using this space was human, they’d get one mouthful of that before detecting something amiss with no real harm done.

And if they weren’t, which Jonathan both suspects and hopes, well. It should do _some_ harm.

It is fully night by the time Jonathan makes his careful, quiet approach. He walks with no lantern, for he has no need: the moonbeams spearing through the canopy are quite enough for his eerie sight. _“It is fortunate that you wear spectacles,”_ Jonah once told him. _“Or else I might think you a monster, with your eyes shining like that.”_

Dr. Fanshawe does not know the precise nature of his blessings, but he knows that they do not make him monstrous. He is a _killer_ of beasts, of abominations, of things which are the stuff of nightmares. He does what he does so he does not have to examine mutilated corpses in his regular working life, struggling to find rational explanations for the damage. He seeks out the creatures that sow terror wherever they walk so that he and his countrymen may sleep soundly.

The thing using that house is a danger, Jonathan believes. The snapping of twigs underfoot is more silent than the night breeze shifting the leaves in the canopy. Rifle in hand, he takes up a place he’d scouted during his recent visit and shrouds himself in thick shrubbery.

He listens. Watches. He tells himself that it is simply the chill in the air which makes him lick his lips.

Barnabas holds onto himself as long as he can. He paces the floor of the cottage as the last of the daylight trickles, both agonizingly too slow and much too fast, down into the deep hush and shadow of the evening. The first few times it came upon him, he wept, but he does not weep tonight. He longs for the crowded laughter of a gambling hall, or for the quiet comfort of his sitting room with a fire, but he does not light a fire in the cottage’s fireplace. Instead, he takes the time to fill the basin for water and drink a couple of palmfuls to steady his nerves and give his stomach something to gnaw at that isn’t the backside of itself. He had been wistfully considering tea, but the odd taste of the water makes his mind up for him and leaves him making faces like a child into the remainder by the time he finishes his second swallow. Something must be amiss with it, but though he’d like to investigate, Barnabas knows he has no time. His hands are trembling as he watches through the window the deep silent grey of twilight smooth into the starlit liveliness of night, with the wild scud of clouds wheeling above in the velvet-blue sky and the moon, full and round as a silver coin.

He knows it is no longer coming but _here_ by the sudden intensity of his senses and the nerveless tremble of his hand. He does not crumple, as such, but Barnabas feels his knees going out from under him and he lets it happen, folding down onto the floor of the cabin. His senses are filled with new input—the uncontained immensity of it leaves his mind scrabbling for purchase as he tries to process it. _Stranger,_ something in his nose tells him, and he makes a sound like he’s been punched in the gut, winded and airless—and it is at this moment that he feels something go terribly wrong.

He wants to be sick, his belly lurching up, and he can feel the pressure at the back of his throat, his empty stomach twisting around the water—and it _burns_ like he’s swallowed a star. The pit of his stomach is full of cold fire and Barnabas can do nothing about it, folding achingly in onto himself and rocking back and forth, knees to chest, as he pants. He can feel everything in his body moving: the itch and ache of bones rises from simmer to boil until he feels the first twist of muscle changing—and his head goes back, a low howl of horror and misery tearing its way out of him half-muffled.

He thinks, with brief and miserable detachment, how unpleasant the itch of the thick black-brown shag of fur on skin is as it grows in sudden and lush, the broadening bulk of his body making the cloth of shirt and coat give way with a thick, growling _rip_ at the seams—but that is nothing to the awkwardness as kneeling legs scrabble into digitigrade paws, claws digging furrows into the rug. It always feels as if there should be more pain in the transformation, with the sound of bone and cartilage popping and snapping as it rearranges itself, but especially tonight it is diminished further by the searing fire in his belly, the cry of the wolf in his head behind simmering silver mist. Someone was here, it knows, someone quiet and clever, and it can only just catch enough smell to know that and nothing else, even though he presses his half-changed nose to the floor as it turns wet and black.

The fire in his belly is not subsiding, and even as Barnabas finds himself on all four paws, his human terror subsumed beneath the sheer wall of cold rage that is the wolf, he finds himself reeling sick and dizzy toward the door. He cannot keep his feet, and it takes him four tries to force the door open. He has to be out, away—a _stranger_ has been in his den and the wolf is sick and it does not dare to try and hold its ground with the smell of the stranger on it.

He is drooling-sick as he hesitates in the swinging doorway, head up, his wavering pupils pinpoints of darkness lost in the honey-gold of his irises, and the wolf howls its high and lonely call to the moon as Barnabas despairs inside. He shakes off the shredded remnants of a fine fawn-brown jacket, wobbling on his paws, and scents the air for danger. He dares not show weakness if he can avoid it.

Dr. Fanshawe has a beautiful shot, and he has it because he’s _planned_ for this: laid his trap, set his ambush, and moved into position undetected. He has a _beautiful_ shot, and his finger settles over the trigger but he does not yet fire. Consideration stays his hand.

Jonathan had not been sure if the yowling going on inside the cottage was a regular symptom of the metamorphosis or a sign that the beast drank something it shouldn’t have. Impossible to tell, really—the rattling of the door _could_ be the clumsiness of having paws. But when Jonathan sees it in the flesh and fur, unsteady on its feet and grimacing with torment, his doubts are put to rest. A successful experiment—he will have to remember its effectiveness in the future.

But in the present, staring at this _wretched_ thing, Dr. Fanshawe hardly thinks it fair to end this swiftly with a silvered bullet in its brain. No, this beast poses little threat: it doesn’t see him, doesn’t smell him, and it knows that something is amiss. Jonathan understands all of this by instinct, for the spirits of himself and this creature are more kindred than he would care to acknowledge.

Jonathan’s heart dances with the thrill of a chase soon to begin. He stands at his mark, eager to spring into motion as soon as he hears the starting gun.

And his shot splits the night open.

The crack of gunfire reaches the creature’s ears half a second before the impact of the bullet comes, and this saves him from the worst of the wounding. It might have saved him entirely had he not been hazed with sickness and clumsy with fresh transformation, but the shadow of Barnabas beneath the instinct of the wolf is ready to bolt and he _does_ the moment he becomes aware something is wrong. Still, he feels the sudden bright heat of the bullet scoring flesh open across his left rear thigh, and a distorted yelp escapes his throat in surprise before the pain even registers.

When it comes a full second later it is vivid, searing, and it nearly overbalances him with the force of it, his knee buckling slightly beneath him as agony drives a hot, rusty spike into the meat of him. The slice of the bullet burns in a way that is at once distressingly like and different from the cold misery in his belly—the scream of nerves scraped raw and corroded with silver. Blood spatters the leaf-strewn earth in a crimson spurt, and the wolf’s mind cries out in fear and anger. Barnabas knows that he has been shot, and he cannot think clearly enough over moon-madness and pain to figure out where the hunter is. His nose is blinded still with metal and he does not dare to rely on his eyes, not when another shot could find him at any moment.

He is undecided for only a split second—Fight? Flee? Instinct wants him to turn and fight, but blood is running freely from the torn part of his leg; his stomach is a twisted solid mass of agony at the center of his being, and although Barnabas is filled with sick horror, the part of him that is only the wolf is experiencing pure, silvery, unalloyed _fear_ —a completely alien emotion that has never belonged to it before. The consensus between the two parts is reached easily: run.

Though he dearly wants to, he does not tuck his tail; instead he takes to his heels like the Devil himself is on them, crashing with diminished grace through the underbrush and leaving splats of blood and saliva behind in his haste.

Jonathan springs into hot pursuit at the first moment it becomes clear that he will have his chase. He runs with the rifle held close to his body, lest it snag and lose him time. Footfall by footfall, he gets out and raises his pistol, and Jonathan has the sense to pause to aim before he gets his shots off. Both barrels empty, and the echoing rings of gunfire again startle the wildlife around.

The wolf, four-legged and sleek, is built for this terrain and even wounded, Jonathan knows, it will quickly outpace him. He can hear the thing crashing through the brush in its haste to escape: he’d like to believe he hit it again, but he knows it is unlikely. Jonathan lets it go—for now. He would not be of much use with empty weapons should he catch the creature. And so he stays, reloading his firearms with dull silver and listening for the wolf’s approach should it change its mind and grow bold.

The aim is almost true enough, and Barnabas again hears the sound of the shot before the bullet itself finds him. He snarls, but there is nothing he can do about the furrow it has drawn across his opposite hindquarter, snatching fur and flesh and etching another bloody wound in his hide. His panicked flight hitches only once, and he flees as far and as fast as his weakened body will take him with its stomach afire.

Before too long, though, his paws foul in the underbrush with weakness, and Barnabas goes down heavily. The wounds he has been given are flesh wounds, he thinks, and he cannot understand why he feels heavy-headed, drunk, woozy. The world around him, colours already reduced by the wolf’s eyes, swims in thick runnels of blue and yellow and grey, and he struggles to find his paws, head weaving back and forth, tongue lolling out of his mouth stained a deep purple and dripping with saliva as he makes it back up onto all fours just in time for his insides to seize with a fresh cramp.

He empties the contents of his belly into the underbrush, heaving and choking thickly, and there is not much to what comes up. Still, he shakes his head to clear it, splattering the leaves and trunks nearby with the mess—and suddenly his nose is clearer, too. The scent of iron and salt fills his senses, hot and bewildering, at once a horror and a provocation for the wolf that has crowded out most of Barnabas’ finer, more human thoughts. He can taste it thick on his tongue, and though his belly is so empty it feels as if it has crushed itself up against his spine, the burn inside it has eased only fractionally.

He aches with hunger and weakness, trembling all over like a fly-stung horse, the thick brush of his tail low, sweeping back and forth as a ragged whine issues forth from his raw throat. Blood and saliva drools down his jaws, matting into the thick fur at his ruff. It is not safe to go back to the cottage and wait this out, Barnabas knows. The hunter knows he will want to be there—is probably waiting for him to try—and he shakes his head again, trying to clear the haze from his thoughts.

If he does not solve the problem of the hunter Barnabas is as good as dead anyway, the wolf reasons with his black-and-white certainty, and even if he were more human now he could not disagree. He cannot go back into town naked and sick and wounded. He turns, placing his paws carefully, to face the trail of broken foliage and greenery he left in his wake. The wood, usually so inviting and full of things to smell and chase and hunt when he is like this, feels dark and thick with shadows tonight, obscure and terrible; it feels as if it is full of eyes and ears and _watching._ Somewhere between here and safety is a man with a gun, and the raving fury of the moon rises up again in his chest, lending him strength and steadiness he will pay for later—if there is a later. He is not sure if he will die of whatever poison he consumed, he thinks, as he sets a more circuitous route back toward the cottage, cutting as wide and silent as he can around the path he made. Still, if he does die, he will make sure the hunter feels the weight of his own sins before he is done.

The wolf is long, long gone by the time the hunter is finished seeing to his killing-tools. His thumping heart is far from anxious: he is excited to embark on the trail laid out before him. Jonathan has laid the mark of fright upon his quarry, and that alone would be enough to follow it by. He craves that much more than he craves the violence: it gives him courage and swiftness and strength. Jonathan never feels more powerful than when he is the barely-seen shadow; the snap of a twig; the footsteps in a solitary, safe place. The terror of the guilty’s fleeing or the coward’s hiding is the most savoury and filling thing in the world to him. And why shouldn’t it be? He is doing the city a service.

Jonathan walks the steps the wolf fled by at an unhurried pace, for he has no need to rush—his prey will need to stop and rest eventually. There are many hours left of moonlight and Jonathan knows where the beast will be come dawn. What would be more fun, he wonders: slaying the wolf in the woods or waiting until morning and putting a bullet into the head of a man, where he would get to see all of that expressive, human horror? Both sound excellent, even if the second wouldn’t be very sportsmanlike. So he’ll give the first a go.

His night vision does not allow him to see the colour of blood on the ground but he can smell it, sharp and bright in his nose. The scent of the wolf itself was soaked into the cottage, but Jonathan catches it anew: sweat and spit and _canine._ He has never owned a dog himself—they are such messy things—but it is not so far apart from what he remembers, being around them.

Jonathan comes upon the clearing where the wolf had fallen and voided its stomach, and he scowls his distaste for it. Finding where the trail picks up again—less blood here, more thickly-clotted—Jonathan notices that it is leading in a direction different than before. Back the way from which it came, but at a diagonal. Possibly heading back towards the cottage already, then.

So he goes, keeping his steps lighter than before to better allow his ear to detect his quarry, should he draw close. Jonathan’s gloved fingers tap out a silent, energetic rhythm upon his rifle’s trigger guard. He is grinning—wants to hum a tune, but he doesn’t—and moves through the forest with a youthful sort of nimbleness.

Hide and seek always was his favourite game as a child.

As distressed as Barnabas is, he cannot miss the drawing-together of tension, the way the clocksprings of the world seem to twist tight around him as the chase resumes. He is a predator, but beneath the predator is a fearful man, and Barnabas knows with desperate clarity that he is in more trouble than he has ever been in before. This is more trouble than when he first found himself at the business end of the wolf’s jaws where he earned this curse, and he is frightened. The part of him that is still human, beneath the wild haze of the moon, is babbling frantic prayers to whatever god might be listening.

He does not think any of them will hear him.

The wolf takes an abstracted route, picking his careful way through the brush. His focus, normally sharp, is blunted; he is as distractible as a pup with pain and hunger. When a rabbit streaks across his path, it takes a Herculean amount of effort not to chase it, and he loses long moments staring down the game-trail after it with eyes that feel like burnt hollows in his skull. He can feel in ghostly pantomime the crush of bone, the sharp savour of rabbit meat on his tongue, and he licks his chops, whines softly into the night. Barnabas has never been so _hungry_ before. Even with a belly full of blood and misery and a hunter a breath behind him, the wolf’s instincts ride him hard, and it is all he can do to push himself on. Hunger can wait. It has to wait.

He can tell without breaking through the treeline into the clearing that the hunter is no longer at the cottage when he finally comes back around to it. The door is still open and creaking in the wind, the hastily-repaired lock still just as broken as it was when he burst out of the door, and the smell of _stranger_ is not fresh in the little clearing. He pauses, swaying slightly, his wits blunted. If he were not sick, perhaps he would make his stand here, but Barnabas has sense enough to know how little protection the cottage offers in a siege, with the rag-stuffed holes in the corners and the way the wind whistles down the chimney. No, a man with a gun would only have to wait until morning, and Barnabas would be a sitting duck, defenceless without teeth or claws or four fast legs. His tail tucks, and he looks up, over his shoulder. The fitful autumn wind blows from behind and he catches again the scent of the stranger on it. He shakes his head, ears low, pulling his lips back from the blood-smeared white of his predator’s teeth—and he resumes his painful lope, not daring to approach the cottage but moving past it, giving it a wide berth as he tries to regain the distance he has lost. There will be no safety tonight, alongside no food.

Where the wolf leads, the hunter follows. For hours, this is their dance. Jonathan falls into step tirelessly, and he knows that he will pay for it with his exhaustion tomorrow but the Hunt keeps him keen and puts motion in his frame for as long as it will last. He will not— _can_ not—rest until one of them is slain. As long as there is a trail, Jonathan will follow it. And as long as the wolf is fearful, there will be a trail.

The close encounters become more common as time wears on: Jonathan hears movement or hears the sound of panting and he pauses to try and sight the beast. A couple of times, he thinks he sees thick fur through a shroud of leaves, but it is indistinct and disappears on his approaching step. Jonathan will not waste his bullets on a phantom when he may need them for an actual encounter.

When the fear in the air grows stagnant and the path requires more focus to follow, Jonathan tries a different tactic. He wets his palate with a mouthful of river-water, clears his throat, and makes his threat known, bellowing into the quiet night.

“Where are you going, little wolf? I have never seen such cowardice in my life. Do you even have the faculties to understand me when I say that the one who made you gave me a _fight_ before it perished? In these woods lie the bones of your maker, and yours will follow tonight.

“So run! By all means, run! Tire yourself and go easy to your grave. If you are very fortunate, then you may expire of your wounds before I find you.” Jonathan takes a moment to listen for a response: footsteps, an answering snarl, _anything._

As the night and the moonlight have worn thin, so has Barnabas’ energy; the hunter’s relentless pace drives him on and on, sparing him no rest, no recovery. His vision is washed with grey, and he is beyond hunger, beyond thirst, in the windswept deep chill of earliest morning. He aches in every part, and the pain in the center of him has been replaced with a leaden cold, a stillness that he likes even less than the burning. It feels like a standoff, and he knows with deadly certainty the scale will tip at any moment in the hunter’s favour. The fear, too, has worn as thin as threads stretched tighter than they were meant to, and his tongue hangs from his mouth, panting silently as he can. The hunter’s back is turned to him, and he is close—no more than fifteen feet away—but Barnabas is frozen to the spot, head hung low, tail limp.

But the voice is familiar—or is it? His head raises, but through the fog of exhaustion that fills his skull and the wolf’s dry, dead desperation Barnabas cannot reach the information: it is like there is a hole at the center of his thoughts where the answer should be. The words, however, he has to search for the meanings to—he has never been so far submerged beneath the wolf’s instinct before, and it feels like drowning as he turns the syllables over and over in his head, unmoving, attempting to glean the knowledge from them. Is he a coward? Barnabas has never thought that he was, but perhaps he is, because although the wolf wants to howl a challenge, he chokes it down to a harsh breath. He cannot win the fight against a gun and knows he is not fast enough to outrun a bullet, not with how much blood he has poured out across the woods tonight.

He has no doubt, once he fights his way up through the haze of instinct and despair, that the wolf who came before is dead, the terrifying lights of his eyes and finger-length fangs put to an uneasy rest. He has no doubt that the hunter—why is that voice so familiar, even distorted in the wolf’s ears?—is the one who buried those bones, whose bullet took the glow from those eyes. But Barnabas is exhausted and tired of being afraid, and it is this weariness that gives rise to his fatal slip when he realizes who the hunter’s voice reminds him of. If nothing else, the sweet thought of a friend is worth carrying with him to the grave.

Unbidden, his tail begins wagging, and thumps against the bushes three times, making the dry, crisp leaves rattle in a peculiar, soft susurration of sound too rhythmic for the aimless flirt of the wind. He realizes too late what he’s done, and Barnabas heaves himself out of the uneasy crouch he’d been hiding in, attempting a final bolt for safety. Footsore and heavy-headed, he is not as fast as he wishes he could be.

Jonathan whirls around and catches the sign of fleeing fur, much more visible than before in the light of pre-dawn. The rifle raises and the barrel traces the creature’s path. Jonathan’s heart is thudding with the sudden excitement but his hands are steady on the weapon. This time the chattering birds are awake to hear the artificial thunderclap and fly screaming from its source.

He’d have heard the wolf cry out if he hit it, but there is no bestial yelp of pain. Jonathan shoulders the rifle and gets out his pistol once more, taking off through the brush at a brisk walk and not a run. With the wolf freshly terrified and fleeing from closer than it’s ever been, he knows that he will eventually catch up. When he passes by the bullet hole, shot off-centre through a tree trunk, he scowls his displeasure. In the future, he will have to be quicker on the draw.

The wolf’s tenacity is admirable, he has to admit—shot twice and continuing to run for hours. Tenacious but foolish, Jonathan thinks: if it wanted to survive, then it should have attacked him already. Ideally in their first encounter before the bleeding had a chance to sap its strength. It should have attacked him _a moment ago,_ while he was calling for it—but still the thing tucked its tail and ran. A defective hunter like that _deserves_ to be put down.

Barnabas knows this is his last burst of strength; that he must live or die on this final wind. He knows in his bones that his odds are long and growing longer with each passing minute, each exhausted stride losing him ground to the hunter; he knows with a dreadful certainty that he has gambled and lost. The sound of the gunshot does not even lend him adrenaline, but he puts his head down and moves faster, driving himself on with pure stubbornness.

What is his aim? He wonders this with a peculiar detachment, the cold and distant clarity that comes with long exhaustion and the loss of any other option. With the moon all but gone from the sky, the wolf’s instincts are quieter, more easily managed; Barnabas can think, and he does so with ruthless practicality. If he survives until the sun is up and the wildness of the moon is gone, he will be a man and only that. He imagines facing the hunter down with blood smearing his mouth, with his hide brutalized, his body and sin naked before God and man—useless and _human._ The hunter could take him easily then, he knows. Barnabas does not doubt he would, too, and a bullet between his startled eyes would be kinder than some other options the man might consider after the miserable slog of a chase he has led him on.

It is with some bewilderment he notes the shape, grey on grey, of the familiar cottage ahead, limned against the backdrop of tree and sky with the foremost edge of dawn. He can feel the hunter behind him, his presence like an immense pressure, the hand of an avenging devil knotted in the nerves behind his eyes—and he runs. He breaks the treeline into the clearing with an urgent, aching sound wrenched up out of his gut and makes for the open door. If he is to die, Barnabas prays, let it be as a wolf so his friends will not know his shame.

Jonathan is figuring out how best to approach jumping the small river when the animal groan of exertion snaps Jonathan’s attention in that direction. Not wanting to lose the initiative when the creature is that close, he takes a running start and lands heavy with his boots sinking into the mud, but still he keeps his balance. He can see the constructed edge of the cottage now through the veil of twig and leaf. The padding of paws on earth give way to the click of claws on old hardwood, and Jonathan knows that the beast will be in there waiting.

He exhales through a satisfied grin and takes a moment’s rest to wipe the sweat from his brow and the fog from his glasses. He prefers the pistol at close range but he reloads the rifle all the same, holding it at his side once finished. It’d be useful to have in case the creature decides to make yet another run for it. And besides, it’s good manners to bring more than one gift if he is to be a houseguest.

Circling around to the front of the building, Jonathan abandons all pretence of stealth as he calls, “What’s the time, Mr. Wolf?” He sounds positively elated, and he _is,_ filled to bursting with anticipatory glee and thinking of the hard-earned taste of blood. 

“Is it dawn already?” And the hunter crosses the threshold, all gleaming metal and dark leathers and angles and terror and _teeth._

The vague and hazy light of dawn illuminates the scene unfolding in the cottage: Any heat it might have held has been sapped away by the autumn night; the lamps are all extinguished, and the puckish wind has swept the floors full of the curled, dry corpses of leaves. An east-facing window has a good view of the sky over trees and a lance of the earliest sunlight has struck a hole in the low grey clouds and fallen just inside the window, illuminating the spectre of the wolf like a ghost from behind.

It is large—shaggy brown fur covers its body; it is smeared and spotted with mud and blood. Its eyes are Barnabas’ eyes, honey-brown, strikingly lucid in the dark otter-sable fur. These eyes do not change, not even when the wolf does: his cry is low, piteous, agonized, and the fur begins to run and blur against his skin like water. The change is slow, his body too weak to move through the steps of destruction and creation with any sort of grace, and the sounds of bones and muscles rearranging themselves with slapdash imprecision fills the small space. Barnabas allows himself to feel a thin and painful hope—though fresh blood spills sluggishly onto the wooden floor as the rearranging flesh and fur flow over leg and hip—that he may survive.

When the hunter’s voice calls, though, even that runs cold. He is not quite human yet, but he is certainly not enough wolf to have any hope of self-defence as he looks up, vision swimming with colours he both can and cannot see as his vision changes from wolf to human, reds and yellows and blues fading in and out like retinal rainbows. It is thus half-blinded that he finds himself kneeling and nude in the centre of the bare and bloodied floor, staring up with mute horror at the silhouette of the hunter. He sees teeth, he sees metal, he smells that familiar not-familiar scent, and Barnabas rasps out a questioning sound with his throat raw and aching. His lips and chin are stained a bruisey purple, and his pupils are narrow and pinned, his gaze wavering and unsteady as he holds out his hands with their stained and filthy palms empty, in a gesture of supplication. _Please,_ he wants to say, not sure if he is asking for life or death. But he doesn’t get the chance to, for his voice is the last thing to change.

There is a man inside the house, a mud-caked and bloodied _wretch_ of a thing, but Jonathan, knowing what he is—what they both are—has no mercy for it. This wouldn’t be the first human-shaped thing that he’s put down—this wouldn’t be the first _human_ he’s put down, for that matter. Jonathan’s steps are measured and his pistol is aimed at the man’s breast. He doesn’t get too close: just close enough to feel confident about his aim. If the creature lashes out or tries to bolt, Jonathan is sure that a bullet in its lung or heart would slow it, if not end it.

Jonathan’s gaze slides up to regard its face. The stain on its chin tells Jonathan that it had drunk the lunar caustic—which he suspected, but the further confirmation is welcome. Its matted hair is dark like the fur was; its face, beardless by choice and not by youth. Jonathan looks at last into the monster’s eyes and the recognition there is mutual.

On the floor kneels Barnabas Bennett—or the shape of him, at least. Jonathan has known the man for years, and there was scarcely an event in town he attended where Barnabas was not also present. In fact, Barnabas was one of the precious few who made outings tolerable to him. In fact, he could call him a friend.

But this isn’t him. This cannot be him. Jonathan would have been able to tell before now, surely: see him for the beast he was inside. This must be the work of some clever creature playing tricks on his perception.

“That’s going beyond the pale,” Jonathan snarls to him and inhales a rumbling growl. “Wearing that face. Show yourself, or I shall make your dying last longer than the chase.”

In that moment, Jonathan Fanshawe is a truly fearsome presence. He speaks with human tongue, is clothed like them, and carries fire in his weapons, but he is more a beast than the wolf was. More devoted to the spirit of the chase than any predator because he is not obliged to do it. For him it is a _vocation,_ and the joy of the hunt is what keeps him coming back, time and time again.

Surprise and fear break over Barnabas—he had not thought himself capable of fearing any more tonight. “Fanshawe,” he tries, and then, looking down the barrel of the pistol framed in the steady dark hand, “Jonathan!” His teeth are chattering with cold in the early morning stillness, and he tries again, raising his hands to the level of his shoulders. Behind his breastbone his heart is pounding, frantic, as if it might dash itself to death against the inside of his ribs. His voice is hoarse, crackling, broken with the damage of the chemical he swallowed, ragged with the exertion of the wolf’s long flight, and thready with the blood he has lost. His cheeks are pale and drawn, the dark point below one wavering golden-brown eye standing out in sharp relief against his bloodless pallor.

He tries a shaky smile as if he might reassure Jonathan of his identity, but his face was too recently a wolf’s face, and the bones and muscles feel wrong still; it is a grimace, a rictus, poorly coordinated beneath his stained mouth. “Please, I—you must know me, you—I know you!” He hazards the words even though his throat feels full of shattered glass and his every muscle aches. “I know you,” he repeats, breathless. Barnabas finds with dismaying abruptness that his courage has finally reached a bottom, as it sinks in finally that Jonathan, a man he has always considered a friend, has hunted him for hours, wounded him; _Jonathan_ stands before him with a gun trained on his vitals. This man, for whom Barnabas has always harboured a deep and secret admiration, will kill him if he cannot prove his identity. And he _knows_ with a sick certainty that the hunter—all sharp swift brightness behind the measured familiarity of Jonathan’s face—may kill him even if he can.

His broad, awkward shoulders hunch into themselves as he folds down toward his knees with a sound of despair. He does not wait to see if his entreaty has swayed Jonathan, only puts his dark head down in defeat to hide the burn of tears, the unruly mess of his hair soaked with sweat and mud and shreds of plant matter. The untamable lock of hair at the crown of his skull still stands up, limp and flagging but inimitable.

“Bennett,” Fanshawe snaps back, skeptical and accusatory. A warning.

His aim does not stray and his fingers rest delicately, achingly close to the triggers, eager to _pull_ and spray blood across the floor. It would gather in the channels where the wolf’s own claws have gouged out lines, forming rivers, making a dozen little distributaries. It would be so easy. Jonathan has worked for this; _earned_ this, and he starves for the sight and smell and taste, so much so that saliva bubbles in his gums.

But the thing that looks like Barnabas called him by name. It recognized him immediately: didn’t have to think, didn’t have to consider. Didn’t have to perform any mind-reading tricks. If the beast wanted to gut him, it wouldn’t be averting its gaze and weeping. If it wanted to escape, it would keep its eyes on the door. This is a man right now, just a man, and Jonathan does not doubt that the sorrow it feels is genuine.

Jonathan does not let the pitiful display affect him—or, at least, that is what he projects. “Bennett,” he repeats, judgement-stern. “Are you a murderer? Have you killed?” With an answer Jonathan can end this, one way or another.

Barnabas’ head snaps up, eyes wide, expression taut with guilt and horror and certainty, tears cutting river-paths through the grime on his guileless face. “Never a human,” he says hoarsely without dissembling, then clears his throat with a gravelly, painful sound, and repeats himself. “I’ve—killed animals.” 

His stomach twists and he fights down the nausea of hunger with a hitch, his belly feeling sanded-raw and empty, empty, _empty._ If the night had gone differently, it might have been full now, his body curled half-dressed and asleep in front of a fire, the hunger and need satiated. Instead, he faces down judge and jury and executioner in one, in the guise of a dear friend. “Livestock even. Broken fences, damaged things. But I—I’ve sent money for repairs! Please, Jonathan, you must believe me—we can go over my books, I’ll show you every cheque I’ve written, anonymously; they must be able to correlate to the damages! I swear to you I’ve done everything I can to, to minimize this! That’s—that’s why I’m here, not locked in my home in town.” He raises a trembling hand to dash the tears from his cheeks, smearing them impatiently with the mud and blood on his palms. “I came so close to hurting someone and... I could not bear endangering anyone else. I don’t know how to prove that to you, though.”

His posture is still slumped, defeated, but the animation has come back to his face, the stubborn gleam of life to his honey-bright eyes is fitful but there in a way it has not been until now. “I was too afraid to tell, and now I fear it is too late.”

Jonathan allows the man to make his case; to arrange the support of his own defence. And it makes _sense,_ all of it. Barnabas is being so specific with his explanations that they cannot be anything but the truth, all laid out for him to peruse at his leisure. The excitement of the chase is fading now, giving way to the fear of swift, cool justice being done. Barnabas’ will to flee has deserted him. Whether Jonathan spares or slays Barnabas makes little difference now: the hunt has reached its completion.

An _ethical_ monster then, is it? Well. Then that makes two of them, Jonathan supposes. 

Jonathan has little choice but to uncock his gun and holster it, having decided that he will not be killing a friend tonight. “No. It isn’t.” He does not turn his back on Barnabas as he circles around him, heading for the kitchen area. “Stay there. I will wash and tend to your wounds.” His tone continues to be clipped and sharp as he stays guarded. Playing the physician isn’t something he expected to be doing, and it will take some time for him to slip into a healing role.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art done by the wonderful [Korro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dual_Screen)!
> 
> This fic would not exist if not for the Jonah Discord and all the wonderful ideas from the people there. Here's to you!
> 
> **Content warnings:**  
>  Gore, gun violence, poisoning, and vomiting. [return to top]


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click to view content warnings.

The rush of air that escapes Barnabas when he hears the soft, contained metallic click inside the pistol and watches Jonathan lower it has a hitch on the end like a sob, and relief floods him, filling all the empty space inside him until he has no room left for anything but a boneless, fainting, lightheaded feeling. Against all odds he has survived, and Barnabas does not know how to handle this; he has spent hours with the certainty that his life is no longer his own, and now that Jonathan has effectively given it back to him, he finds he does not know what to do with it any longer. The possibilities are too many, his head and hands too full of a future he is certain he has not earned, and he does not move, his empty hands dropping loosely into his lap as he sits obediently still, bare arse thumping down on the claw-grooved wooden floor, looking lost. The pain of his wounds seems so distant he barely registers them.

“Of—of course, Jonathan,” he says, and he knows his voice sounds strange, numb; he is distantly aware that there are warm tears streaking his cold cheeks, but he is smiling, like the sun shining while it rains. “Thank you… thank you, friend—I-I cannot express my gratitude enough.” It will be a tangled knot of emotion later, but he watches Jonathan with a dazed expression, his wide and staring eyes following him as if he needs some direction, some anchor by which he can reorient himself. “I am sorry if,” Barnabas says, then pauses, knowing it sounds foolish even before he finishes the sentence, but unable to stop his tongue from wagging, “I have troubled you tonight. I am sure that you… had better things to do than hunt a wolf on—hah, on such a night!” He isn’t sure if it’s a joke or not, but relief has made him giddy and foolish.

Jonathan searches among the cookware, looking for something to hold water, since he’d made the washbasin unusable. Listening to Barnabas chatter on so much like his usual self reassures him again that this is indeed his friend in the flesh and not some shifter’s practiced subterfuge. “It’s a pastime,” Jonathan responds, and there is almost a bit of levity in there. Jonathan finds a large stock pot and cradles it against his side, since he still carries his rifle with him. “I’ll be right back. Don’t use the basin,” he warns.

Outside, Jonathan doesn’t rush the process of washing his face and hands and fetching water, since if Barnabas is feeling well enough to talk then he feels well enough to not bleed to death. Jonathan drinks from the river and feels more himself for it. More stable, more professional. More capable of seeing wounds without wishing to multiply them. He leaves the rifle leaning up against the pile of firewood and carries the pot back indoors.

There are linens in the cabinet, and Jonathan brings an armload of them over to use as cleaning cloths and bandages. He dips a heavy ceramic mug into the pot and passes it over to Barnabas so that he may have something to drink before the water is dirtied. “Where did I hit you? Could you hold yourself up on your hands and knees for a moment?”

Barnabas does not have the energy to rise or reassemble himself, as much as he wants to, and so he does not move, only rearranges the puppyish tumble of his limbs into something more approaching a comfortable posture—but when Jonathan returns to give him the mug, he takes it and raises it to his lips. His tongue is half out of his mouth to lap at the contents before he remembers himself again and tips the mug edge-first to his mouth to drink. The chill of the water aches as it eases down a throat so raw it feels burned. He does not think ahead enough not to bolt the whole cup in his thirst, though, instead draining it with haste. A pained noise is driven out of his lungs as the water hits bottom in his empty belly, bringing the stab of a cramp that takes a few moments to pass. “Oof,” Barnabas manages, voice airless and face twisted with dismay, as the mug falls the short way to the wooden floor, bounces, and rolls a few inches.

Still, the cramp passes, and he manages to keep the water for now. He nods a little hazily in response to the question, and eases himself up gracelessly onto his knees again, though every overworked muscle in his body protests. He doesn’t need to speak, anyway: the bullet wounds are obvious once his back is turned to Jonathan. The first bullet scored a deep and ragged tear across the back of his left thigh, much too large to scab securely, his blood dribbling down the back of his leg. The other is more superficial, a nasty graze—but nothing more than a graze—across the top of his right hip. It is only thanks to the werewolf’s endurance and healing that he has not bled out over the course of the night—his arse and thighs are smeared and sticky with the bright crimson of his own blood, and even in this extreme situation, he has enough decorum to blush at showing so much skin. “I’m sorry,” he says automatically, unsure what he’s apologizing for but feeling he ought to do so again.

Jonathan promptly cuts off any further apology with a, “Don’t. I’m the one responsible for this.” He removes his coat and rolls up his shirtsleeves, ready to get to work. His waistcoat sits differently on him than how Barnabas has seen it: tighter around the chest because there is more chest there to fill it out. He would be a fool to wear his usual corsetry on a hunt when he needs his speed and all the air in his lungs granting it: and besides, the bulk of his coat does enough to conceal his form, loose-fitting and straight-lined as it is. Admittedly, Jonathan does feel self-conscious in not wearing it. But Barnabas knows about his little quirk of biology, even if he’s never seen clear evidence of it before. It’s fine. And the man is fully naked himself, so at least the discomfort is mutual.

Kneeling on the floor and inspecting the more severe wound first, Jonathan wets one of the linens and warns him, “This is going to be painful, but please try not to move too much.” As he daubs the clotted blood and gathered dirt away, he is both grateful that there is no bullet to fish out and annoyed with the quality of his marksmanship—but that is a terrible line of thought he promptly kills because he needs to be focusing on helping Barnabas, not thinking about how he could have hurt him more. It is a deep wound and a nasty one, and Jonathan speaks up to say, “I’m surprised you’ve been able to walk at all. I don’t have my sewing kit, so there’s only so much I can do at the moment. Besides, I wouldn’t wish stitches upon a sober man.”

Looking back at Jonathan, Barnabas finds his gaze sliding over the familiar figure, and he wonders how he didn’t recognize him. Without the wolf’s adjusted colour vision, he feels as if perhaps he would know Jonathan anywhere—could pick him out across a crowded parlour full of dandies, certainly across a clearing in the bright autumn moonlight. He begins to get himself thinking, to start the wheels in his brain pondering this, but the sudden, bright, fresh lance of pain comes half a second later. He starts to cry out but chokes it down to a hoarse, rasping little whimper as his thigh goes taut. His eyes widen, and he focuses his gaze on Jonathan’s face as if searching for something there. He does not give any indication of whether he’s found it or not before he has to focus on something else, anything else.

“Wouldn’t help,” he manages to gasp, once he’s got mind enough to speak again and voice enough to carry it. Barnabas’ head lowers, stretching out the line of his neck, and then he says, a little more shamefully, “I’ll change again. Tomorrow night when the moon’s up, and the next, probably. Stitching would just tear.” He shudders at the thought, containing his jerky and uncomfortable movements as best he can as Jonathan’s clever hands tend the ragged wound. “Doesn’t happen three nights in a row always. Depends on the moon, I think, but… since I didn’t eat and I’m injured, I am sure that I could be barricaded in here, perhaps?” He hazards this guess guardedly, not lifting his head. It’s easier to breathe through the pain this way. “I’ll be… weak. Probably.”

Jonathan is liberal with his application of water to the wound, for it has gone uncleaned for several hours in a less-than-ideal environment. But he has dealt with far worse conditions when he was first starting on his path of medicine, far away in a medical tent during the Great French War. The stress and noise and absence of any sort of stability make it impossible to estimate how many gunshot wounds he has treated in his life, but the answer is certainly plenty, and this is by no means the most severe he has administered his life-saving treatment to. With proper care, Barnabas will recover in time. He may have some difficulty walking in the future, but given his supernatural blood, that is not a guaranteed thing.

It is unfortunately not news to Jonathan to hear that the transformations will last more than one night. When he’d been out hunting the other wolf in the woods, it had taken a month and three separate excursions before he was able to fell the beast.

“Is that generally what you do? Barricade yourself inside?” Jonathan wipes down the back of Barnabas’ thigh with a dry cloth, scrubbing the grit and flakes of blood away. At the mention of not having eaten, Jonathan becomes aware of the emptiness sitting in his own belly. While the hunt was on, food was the furthest thing from his mind: it always is, for it takes all of his focus to concentrate on tracking and on moving. Now the fatigue and hunger are starting to set in. But he will make sure he cares for Barnabas first because he has a responsibility to his comfort and his health. “I have a pack sitting by the road with rations,” he suggests. “Once I’m done with this I could go fetch it.”

“I try to, but you’ve seen how successful that usually is,” Barnabas sighs, his brows furrowing as he tries to keep himself in the requested position. His leg burns with a raw and pulsing ache like a bad tooth, but the pain is rapidly becoming a secondary concern to the exhaustion. His focus is never the keenest of points on any occasion, but it is even more blunted and scattered than usual. “I’ve broken that lock several times. I keep replacing it but I don’t know what else to do. I—if things keep moving forward as they are, I am afraid of what the future brings.” His voice is quiet and heavy with shame, but at the mention of food, his head rises a little.

“I’m sure you’re just as tired as I am,” he objects when he realizes Jonathan is suggesting a walk out to the road. It isn’t far, but he is acutely aware that Jonathan has spent as long on his feet—longer perhaps—as he has, without the benefit of four strong legs to support him, and besides that, he is half-afraid that Jonathan will change his mind while he is away. It is irrational, he knows, but he does not think he could bear to plead for his life a second time when faced with the hunter wearing Jonathan’s familiar handsome face. “I brought a small dinner with me that I didn’t eat, so there’s no need to go out if—if you don’t wish to.” He gestures blindly with one hand in the direction of the door. “I… I’m still not sure of my stomach. I’m not certain what I swallowed before I— _changed,_ but it sat poorly, that’s for certain!” He tries to joke, giving a weary, self-deprecating smile. “Besides… if I’m hungry, I won’t have the energy to put up too much of a fuss tomorrow night, I suppose.” The smile fades, his expression sobering. “It’s… it’s only three days, I suppose. Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

“No, I should go get it,” Jonathan insists. “The longer it stays out there, the more likely it is that the foxes will find it.” He doesn’t look forward to the walk, but he would have to do it sometime, especially if he is to be staying and monitoring Barnabas for the next while.

He drags the pot of water across the floor as he repositions himself to attend to the hip wound. This one is fortunately much less severe, but he does wince when he sees it—not because of that, but because of Barnabas mentioning his stomach problems. “I’m very sorry about that. Lunar caustic—I don’t know how it’s going to affect you when you’re like this, but it’s fine in small doses for regular people. Medicinal, even.” Jonathan wets the washcloth once more and leans over to take a look at Barnabas’ face: more specifically, at the chemical stain of purple-brown on his lips and chin. “You didn’t drink too much, did you?”

Though the hip hurts less than the thigh, he’s still quiet while it’s being tended. He can’t even argue that there aren’t foxes in this wood, because it’s a fox hunt that had him in this forsaken place the first time, so he keeps quiet with a wisdom he doesn’t often possess. Still, Barnabas has a newfound appreciation and charity toward foxes, having been a four-legged predator now and found it ill to his taste. “I don’t know how much there was in the water,” he admits, frowning. “I didn’t have the chance to drink much, though. Only a handful or two, and, well…” His nose scrunches, and he lets out a deep and rueful sigh. “I didn’t keep it down too long, at that.”

Still, Jonathan being so close to his face makes him close his mouth abruptly, pulling his own lower lip into it to chew on it just a little bit, and he is still. A stain of pink rises beneath the warm olive of his skin and Barnabas turns his eyes briefly up to Jonathan’s, searching, before he has to look away and pin his gaze on _literally_ anything else. In these close quarters, he finds his heart beating a little more quickly. It’s a complicated knot of emotion that settles in, lodged uncomfortably in his belly, to stay for awhile—friendship, fear, exhaustion, pain—and the night has been too fraught for him to probe any further than that into it, though he knows there is more beneath the surface. He puts it out of his mind. Right now Jonathan is his physician, seeing to his wounds, and that is simply that. Still, beneath the tumbled mess of his hair, his ears feel over-warm.

“Then you should be fine,” Dr. Fanshawe assures him, “but I would recommend against using the basin or the canteen until they’ve been thoroughly washed.”

Oblivious to Barnabas’ signs of embarrassment, Jonathan simply resumes cleaning out the injury. There is much less blood to wipe away here, but he still does need to rinse and wring out the cloth a couple of times to make sure he gets all of it out of his leg hair. Getting Barnabas into a proper bath would be ideal, but this little cottage doesn’t seem to have one and he cannot in good conscience allow Barnabas to walk out to the river where he could disturb the leg wound’s scabbing or possibly slip and fall.

As he works, he continues to talk, partially to keep Barnabas distracted. “I wouldn’t have suggested it since I’d hate to watch you starve, but going hungry for the next night or two may not be the worst plan for you. The less you are motivated to get up and move about, the better. I’d suggest tying you up, even, but I don’t know the wolf’s measurements and wouldn’t want to risk it being too tight and cutting off your circulation. You’re already injured enough.” Jonathan doubts there are ropes in the world fit to bind a raging werewolf. Silvered chains or manacles, perhaps, but that would be a very specific project to commission, and Jonathan doesn’t have those sorts of contacts. But Jonah had been so kind as to point him in the direction of an accommodating gunsmith to supply him with silver shot, so perhaps he may know other craftspeople as well.

Barnabas hums softly in sheepish affirmation, and he nods, propping up his aching head with one hand under his chin. The faint prickle of his facial hair stings his sore palms, and he looks glum, with dark bruisy shadows forming in the hollows beneath his bright eyes. “As little as I like the thought of being hungry any longer than I have to,” he murmurs with a frown, “I think I like the thought of being tied up for days even less. Besides, I suspect the wolf’s bigger than I think. I don’t exactly know measurements, either. Although I think there’s a measuring string in my—oh, _no._ My coat!” The clothing in question has undergone a sad transformation itself: into a pile of shredded, fawn-coloured lightweight wool laying in the shadow to the left of the door, forlorn and abandoned alongside the remainder of what he’d been wearing when he’d come in. He is grateful to see his boots have escaped the worst fate, although one has ended up in the kindling basket somehow.

Barnabas swears a few times, halfheartedly, then smiles ruefully, the expression funny and lopsided on his stained face. “I know, I have bigger worries, but I _liked_ that coat.”

Jonathan follows Barnabas’ eyes over to the fabric scraps, and he agrees that it’s a pity. Barnabas has always been a sharp dresser, and frequently he feels outdated and dull standing beside him. Even now, with Barnabas wearing nothing at all and him in workman’s dress, Jonathan still manages to feel plain.

But seeing as how there is a simple solution to the problem, Jonathan cannot feel _too_ sympathetic. “Do you mean to tell me,” he begins, “that you locked yourself in here alone, in a place where no one else could see you, and you remained fully dressed until night came? Because that is _true_ dedication to modesty. I know it gets chilly, but you’re perfectly capable of setting a fire.” Jonathan is teasing, and he hopes that the couple of friendly pats he gives to Barnabas’ leg will reinforce it as such.

One last time, he wrings out the blood-soaked rag and drapes it across the side of the makeshift washbasin. And then he stands, wincing as he goes, because his joints have gone sore and stiff from no longer being in constant motion. “Here: rinse your hands and feet, and I’ll bring you fresh water before I go. I’ve some bandages in my pack, and I’d like to properly dress those injuries.”

“I am many things, Jonathan,” Barnabas says with a droll, weary little smile, “but a smart man is not one of them. Or perhaps it’s wisdom I can’t lay claim to?” He scrunches his nose in self-deprecation and then shifts position with exaggerated care, trying to avoid setting the demons in his hip and thigh to screaming again, to peer into the water in the pot. It is a vivid, if translucent, ruby hue in the glow of strengthening morning light, and at least partly made up of his blood. He blanches, and for a moment he feels a little lightheaded, pinching his lips together as his uneasy stomach threatens with a sideways pitch, as if he’s suddenly jumped and left it behind. With the wounds on the backside of his body, it had not entirely sunk in just how much blood he’s lost, but the reddish water makes it suddenly and spookily clear.

Sucking in a steadying breath, he steels himself. _There’s no point in being faint of heart about this, especially when that belongs to you, Bennett,_ Barnabas counsels himself with as much sternness as he can muster. Besides, even excluding the blood he’s seen as a wolf, he’s been on more than one hunting trip, and yet still the sight of his _own_ makes some part of him, in the subconscious strata of his mind, take a temporary and enthusiastic leave of its senses.

“Probably a good idea,” he agrees with a sigh as he gingerly shifts into a seated position and begins to wash the grit and grime from his hands, first by scrubbing them together and then with the cleanest edge of the rag. His clipped-short nails take a moment to clean as he works the dark earth from beneath them, and then he moves on to his feet. He finds it hard to angle these to rinse, but with some pained little grunts and gasps, Barnabas completes the task passably enough. It helps: he cannot claim he feels _good,_ but anything is an improvement from the starting point, though he yearns for a tub and hot water and soap.

“If you’d like to pass me a couple of logs, I can… start a fire while you’re gone?” He hazards this last suggestion a bit skeptically. He will _try_ to start a fire, but sitting on the floor in front of the hearth, Barnabas realizes exactly how much mobility he may have lost, at least temporarily.

Jonathan turns his back on Barnabas so that he may have his privacy, rolling his sleeves back down and collecting his coat so that he may tamp down a little of his self-consciousness. The idea of leaving Barnabas alone in the house, damp and furless in the cool morning was not a thing he could abide, and he has been looking around the home for fire-starting supplies before Barnabas even suggested it. The tinderbox, sitting on the mantel. The kindling basket, with a shoe in it for some reason—which he removes and sets on the floor, naturally. The small pyramid of logs, and he doesn’t mind setting a couple of them in the fireplace for Barnabas to build a fire around. “If you’re sure,” he says, though he’s already gone through the trouble of putting everything in easy reach. “Don’t strain yourself. The less you move around, the better.”

Before he exits, Jonathan pulls one of the blankets off the bed and sets it down by Barnabas’ side. A bit of blood on it would be nothing if it meant preventing a cold. And before he leaves, he holds true to his word of dumping the bloody water into the river and replacing it with something much cleaner. He finds the fallen mug and fills it, setting it down on the hearth for Barnabas. “If you aren’t going to eat, you at least need to drink. You’ve lost a lot of blood today. You need it.” Jonathan pats Barnabas on the shoulder as he rises. “I won’t be long. It isn’t that far.”

There’s a strange feeling, Barnabas thinks, to sitting here on the floor, lightheaded as he’s ever had the misfortune of being and _naked,_ and yet it does not feel wrong, not even with Jonathan going in and out. Strange, yes, but he does not feel the hot, anxious press of mortified modesty that he thinks he ought to feel. Still, his skin tingles—or perhaps he just thinks it does, nothing feels impossible in this state of mind—in the places Jonathan has touched. His shoulder feels the warmth of Jonathan’s hand long after the contact has stopped, and he is pointedly not considering the wounded areas in this clumsy and addleheaded assessment. There is plenty Barnabas isn’t considering right now, and one more thing atop the wobbling tower of others does not seem that dangerous. “All right. Please be safe,” he says, although he immediately feels a little ridiculous. He knows—or the wolf does—every inch of this wood by now. Nothing here is more frightening than he is, except perhaps Jonathan by moonlight, standing behind a gun. This should be comforting, but it fails to be.

Still, when he is truly alone with his thoughts and his fresh water, his first motion is to wrap himself in the blanket, the soft rasp of thick wool immediately feeling like a tender and unaccounted luxury against his chilled skin. Barnabas wraps his arms around himself, and his hands with their palms still red and damp from washing, scrub up and down the opposing arms as he tries to coax life into his exhausted, leaden limbs.

The moment he begins to feel even a little warm, though, his eyes threaten to close involuntarily; instead, he gamely picks up the mug, the blanket hanging from his broad shoulders like an unlikely cloak, and takes a deep drink. In the dim reflection at the bottom of the mug he can see his face, and Barnabas’ expression shifts into a grimace. He looks like five miles of rutted country road in a poorly-sprung carriage, and he feels like ten, but the water helps. He drinks the whole mugful, and by the time that’s settled into his belly and he’s certain that he’ll keep it, he thinks he may have the energy to start the fire. If he doesn’t do _something,_ he’s going to fall asleep right here on the floor, and so he gets his knees under him, positions himself carefully at the hearth, and sets to crafting the fire.

He’s good at it usually, with a steady hand and a gentle touch, and his weariness slows but does not defeat him as he blows a fragile spark into the tinder, and then from there, he can sit back to admire it with slightly glassy eyes as it grows. He’s under orders not to move too much, and for once in his life, Barnabas is inclined to be a good patient.

Jonathan takes time to himself, alone in the woods with the comforting weight of his rifle back in his hands. He focuses on things that do not require empathy or human interaction. Just directionality and movement, and looking for familiar landscape in the growing light of day. He reminds himself that he enjoys solitary walks. That this is a regular human pastime. This is a thing he liked, before the Hunt, and a thing that he still does. No tracking, no want for violence. Just a destination and nature’s company. That is all.

He tries not to think about how he came so close to murdering a friend. On the first sighting of the wolf, he could have shot him stone-cold dead. In the house at dawn, he could have not hesitated to kill him, and he would have had to stare Barnabas’ naked corpse in the face. Would he have given him the dignity of a funeral and a proper burial plot? Or would he have spit on his corpse and left him for the ants and the foxes, as would befit a murderer? What would he have told his acquaintances? Would he have forged a suicide note?

These are terribly morbid things to consider, and Jonathan wouldn’t want to entertain them in Barnabas’ company. That man has such a way of knowing when a friend is having troubled thoughts and a talented way of convincing them to share the burden. But he has burdens of his own right now, and scars both physical and psychological. Barnabas is going to have nightmares about the things that Jonathan has done to him. Jonathan may have nightmares too.

He reaches the dirt road demarcating the divide between treeline and ploughed field, and he considers the dim silhouette of the farmhouse off in the distance. Once this is all over, God willing, he’d like to use what little coin he’d brought in his purse to buy a cart ride back into the city. _He_ can walk back from here just fine, and he had done so more than once on his previous wolf chase. But Barnabas cannot. He ran Barnabas ragged through the woods for hours tonight, and he is not going to leave their passage back into the city up to the luck of a passing cart or carriage.

With a bit of searching, Jonathan locates where he’d stashed his pack and finds it blessedly undisturbed. On his journey back to the cottage he tears into the salt pork and bread he’d brought, believing it rude to eat in Barnabas’ presence if he was going to be fasting. Fortunately, the meal gives him a bit of a second wind, as his steps were starting to resemble falling forwards more than walking. Jonathan eats about half of his supply, and he throws his apple core across the river when at last he reaches the cottage.

Jonathan hears the crackle of the fire before he feels its warmth. Barnabas is wrapped up and on the floor, he sees, and Jonathan soon joins him there with his coat hung up and two rolls of bandages in his hands. “The walk was uneventful,” he reports. “How are you feeling?”

The sound of Jonathan’s voice startles Barnabas, bleary, out of a state that is half trance and half nap, and he makes a guilty little noise, tipping his head up to look at Jonathan and following him down, smiling as if nothing has happened, as if this is just the natural conclusion of a night. He has found his nose to be keener, even in its proper shape, then it had been before, and the smell of apple drifts up to his senses like a dream, but he thinks ruefully that it’s to his stomach’s credit that it does not grumble audibly. He’s filled it with water, at least, and that will have to do. Besides, he thinks guiltily, the weaker he is the less likely it is that he will lose control of the wolf and hurt Jonathan. That, above all else, Barnabas feels he could not abide.

“I’m glad you were safe,” he murmurs, voice thick with sleepiness, and he manages a lopsided version of his usual grin. Being so close to the fire, his bloodless cheeks have roses in them, riotous little spots of colour high on his cheekbones, and his sleepy eyes are bright and dreamy with the flicker and dance of firelight glowing in them. “I’m feeling… well, I cannot say I’m fine, but I think given the events of the night I’m as well as could be expected?” He realizes he’s holding the mug still with a sort of dazed snort, lifting it to automatically finish off the last of a third cup of water, losing a few drops down his chin that he hasn’t the presence of mind enough to swipe away. “The warmth and the water have definitely helped. Not the prettiest fire I’ve ever made, but by God, one of the most welcome, I think!” There is still pain in the lines of his face, but he is wilting-weary and unselfconscious with it. “Here, warm yourself too, you must be frozen through.”

“It is a fine fire,” Jonathan agrees, and he takes a moment to rub his hands together and warm them by its light. He coaxes Barnabas into sitting, supporting him with a palm on his back to keep him from tipping over. For the sake of Barnabas’ modesty, he drapes a corner of the blanket over his groin while he wraps the terrible wound which hamstrung him, around and around, tying it off on the top of his thigh with a neat and practiced knot. “We’ll have to take these off before nightfall,” he explains. “Wouldn’t want them turning into tourniquets, right?” Jonathan temporarily pushes the blanket from Barnabas’ shoulders and drapes it across his lap to bandage the one on his hip. In the physician’s role he thinks little of nudity, but he understands that it inspires a certain level of vulnerability and discomfort in his patients. Knowing that, he’s happy to give Barnabas what little luxuries he can.

“There,” Jonathan says once his task is complete. “Now to get you into bed. Would you like to dress? If you have drawers around, I could help you into them.”

Barnabas moves like a man still dreaming, and it is with a trust that had been perfect until tonight that he allows himself to be manipulated and moved. In this half-asleep warm state, the bandaging feels almost nice, though he hisses as the pressure of the fabric tightens down on the raw flesh, sends another searing lance of pain up to burst, sparkling, behind his eyes. It feels more vivid now, after having sat quietly for so long. Barnabas wonders with a sort of giddy sideways logic that if he could sit still enough, it might not find him again.

He wonders if not thinking about how long this hurt may be with him is lying to himself, and then considers whether he could bear the whole of the truth right now anyway. He has never carried such a wound before, and he doesn’t dare ask Jonathan. His stomach twists at the idea of making his friend feel any guiltier than he must already feel, and he does not know how to approach the question without causing harm he doesn’t intend. Barnabas is a man who invites confidences, who wants to shine light into dark places and illuminate them with his presence, but he does not feel like much of a light right now.

By the time Jonathan has finished, there are a few fresh tears on his cheeks, and he dashes them away with a laugh and grin that’s a little too bright, fragile and cracked as winter pond ice stepped on too soon. Looking down at the fresh white bandage around the meat of his thigh and then hastily up and away, Barnabas nods with a stiff and jerky motion.

“Yes—yes, I brought drawers,” he says, “Along with a change of clothes to walk out of here in. They are in the chest there at the foot of the bed. I thought perhaps that it made sense to keep some things here in case of just this emergency.” He indicates the chest in question, a handsome wooden thing that seems to have escaped damage by wolf, with a brief point to hide the tremble in his hand. “Although you ought to rest in the bed. You’ll need it, if I get—rowdy, tomorrow night.” Guilt of his own flickers across his face.

Jonathan assesses the bed: it seems to be of sturdy construction and the mattress decently thick. Without sitting on it he can’t be sure of how comfortable it actually is, but surely it cannot be worse than the army bunks he endured in his youth. Necessity taught him how to make himself small and quiet in sleep, so he’ll be as little of a burden on Barnabas’ rest as it is possible for a man of his size to be. Like Barnabas, exhaustion hangs heavy on him and the warmth is making him desperate for a place to lay his head. He’s sure that the awkwardness of two grown men sharing a bed meant for only one will not last for very long before they slip into a deep and restorative slumber.

“Sorry I don’t have any liquor to offer you for the pain,” Jonathan says around a grim little smile. With a great amount of patience and care, Jonathan helps Barnabas to his feet and together they make their slow and shuffling steps over to the bed to sit Barnabas down upon it. As per the gentleman’s instructions, he finds drawers in the trunk and sets them on the mattress beside him. Jonathan doesn’t help him into them right away, fetching him a smaller pot from the kitchen with the explanation, “To relieve yourself. I’ll give you your privacy to wash some things.”

Jonathan does exactly that, taking the canteen and the basin and the stock pot outdoors along with a rag to do what he can for their cleanliness. He is thorough about scrubbing as much of the lunar caustic from the vessels as he can. Not knowing how sensitive Barnabas is to the stuff he would prefer to replace them altogether, but this would have to do for now. Jonathan leaves the dishes to dry in the kitchen, comes back with the pot filled with fresh drinking water, and quickly downs a mug of it himself before he goes back to tending Barnabas.

Grateful to no longer be on the floor, Barnabas feels nearly spoiled with the comfort of the softer surface of the mattresses beneath his aching bones, though it is clear the bed has not been well-tended in the absence of its original owner and he has not thought to handle it himself. He rubs his hands up and down his bare thighs to draw warmth into them too, the blanket sliding down his shoulders. While Jonathan is gone, he takes care of what is necessary with a sort of dull discontent, though he is terribly glad he’s got the equipment he does at this moment. He cannot imagine trying to navigate personal hygiene in this much pain with other anatomy, though he knows as a distant second thought that he would make do. It is not as if Barnabas has a choice in the matter, in any case. He does have the energy to set aside the distasteful thing, though, on his own—though hobbling the several feet on his own is as exhausting in itself as anything he’s experienced before tonight.

“Welcome back,” he murmurs drolly to Jonathan when he returns, lips curving in an unfocused smile. He has the fabric of his drawers in his lap, the fastenings undone, and he is in the attitude of a man preparing himself to do something unpleasant. “I had just about worked myself into trying to get these on alone, and did not relish the thought, I am afraid.” It rankles not to be able to tend to his own needs, and if Jonathan were not here, he would likely flop unconscious into the bed and sleep nude. As it stands, though, he has been immodest and naked too long, and some of his natural embarrassment is bubbling toward the surface, long-belated.

“Perfectly understandable,” Jonathan agrees, and accepts the drawers when handed to him. Throughout the process of getting them on Barnabas, he sees to it that Barnabas need only move as much as is absolutely necessary. He doesn’t mind fastening the buttons at the front, and he doesn’t mind tying the drawers closed at the back. Doesn’t mind helping to ease Barnabas into a laying position either, nor getting the bed’s single pillow laid under his head. Nor the fetching of the blankets or the fuelling of the fire or the dumping of the makeshift chamberpot outside.

At last—at _long_ last—Jonathan sits down on the bed’s other side with a weary sigh. The downwards momentum carries him into bending double so that he may unlace and take off his boots. There are many layers to his outfit which need to be removed: pistol belt, waistcoat, trousers, stockings, spectacles. He empties his coat’s pockets of powder and shot and makes a bolster of it to rest his head upon.

The rope frame under the mattresses is slack from lack of maintenance, and Jonathan can feel himself being shifted in Barnabas’ direction as he lays down to rest. Though he is still clothed in shirt and drawers he feels as though maintaining a professional distance is important, so he rolls onto his side with his back to his companion. “Sleep well, Barnabas,” he mumbles, following it up with a yawn. His rest today, undoubtedly, has been well-earned.

Though he would have liked to have helped Jonathan with the routine of settling in for bed, by the time Barnabas had been laid down to rest there was very little choice left; his eyelids felt as if they’d been weighted with all the heavy shot Jonathan had been carrying and then some, and he was unable to keep them open the moment his head was on the pillow. When Jonathan joins him in the bed, though, he is not quite asleep yet, and he mutters something soft and unintelligible in a thick and dozy voice and grins his drowsiest grin in the direction of the ceiling.

For a long few minutes, Barnabas is still as his breaths slow and deepen, smoothing towards true sleep. In his exhaustion, the slack bed frame, the unbeaten mattresses, and the rough blankets feel fine as the clouds of heaven. He does not dream when he is this weary—though he does not often find himself here—and he does not move, laying still on his back and making small, soft sounds that are not quite snores.

It is nearly an hour later when, seeking warmth, Barnabas rolls toward the centre of the bed and Jonathan’s presence. It has been a habit of his since childhood to curl up around a spare pillow when he sleeps, to wrap an arm around it and pull it into the warm broad shelter of his body for comfort. It is this that he does without thinking, one long arm reaching searchingly out, and finding Jonathan less movable than a pillow, he simply rolls in his sleep to find his face against Jonathan’s back, that arm draped across Jonathan’s waist, and he sighs a heart-deep sigh of contentment without stirring.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork done by the wonderful [dundee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dundee998/pseuds/dundee998)!
> 
>  **Content warnings:**  
>  Gore and mild gender dysphoria. Mentions of decomposition, poisoning, and suicide. [return to top]


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click to view content warnings.

Jonathan sleeps on: past Barnabas’ embrace, past morning, past noon. He sleeps on until the sun is well past its apex and the light is starting to turn golden. This is not his bed and there is a solidness beside him, a warm and living one.

There is a weight upon his chest and Jonathan stops breathing. Barnabas continues doing so.

Jonathan waits, still and silent as can be. Barnabas’ breathing does not change its pace, nor does he move. He is, as far as Jonathan can judge, still fast asleep.

As Jonathan rolls over on his side, in the same position he went to sleep in, he moves Barnabas’ arm as little as possible, not wishing to disturb him. On his hip will do, because he cannot bear Barnabas touching his chest, even unaware of what he’s doing. The thought of it turns his stomach.

Jonathan used to sleep with his chest bound, back in his army days. Privacy was such a scarcity that sometimes he’d go days without changing the thick linen. So terrified was he to be discovered that he’d endure the itching and he’d endure his creaking ribcage and the pain, by God, the _pain,_ the panic-inducing tightness in his chest that made him think that he would never fill his lungs again—he would endure every last shred of torment if it meant he got to stay. To be around men as one of them for the first time in his young life. To wear his name: _Assistant Surgeon Fanshawe_ then, and _Jonathan_ to his friends. He feared bloody death less than he feared the humiliation of being cast out and forced back into a girl’s place. He still does.

But today his life is better and those thoughts bother him little. He has a legitimate medical education and the papers to show for it, all with his true name written on them. Strangers may have their suspicions about his age when he tells it to them, but that happens less and less often these days. There is not a soul in Edinburgh who knows the name he was born under—not even Jonah, who knows so many things that he really oughtn’t know. He has an understanding tailor who supplies him with corsetry to perform functions opposite to their usual ones: to flatten the chest and to broaden the waist. A part of Jonathan regrets not having brought one into the woods, but Barnabas would surely think him silly for insisting upon wearing it to bed. 

Jonathan pushes those thoughts from his mind as best he can, and he breathes deeper than he has in weeks. He is here with a friend trustworthy enough to responsibly hold onto his secret. And the warmth of him is pleasant, Jonathan admits to himself once he has sufficiently calmed, and the weight on his hip is comforting. Jonathan continues to doze and make the most of it until the sun has dipped low enough to shine directly in his eyes. Then, grumbling, he extracts himself from Barnabas’ embrace to begin to dress in yesterday’s clothes and prepare himself for another harrowing evening.

Whether it was earned or not, Barnabas has spent the day sleeping the sleep of the untroubled, too exhausted for dreaming—the nightmares will come in time, but the comfort of Jonathan beside him in bed, a cozy living warmth, feels better than any pillow he’s ever slept holding. Still, he cannot help stirring himself from a sleep that has grown thin when he finds his grasp empty; the sun slanting at a deep angle through the window and casting its meagre autumn warmth into the cottage draws from his chest a plaintive noise and he rolls, his questing arm coming up increasingly empty as it gropes blindly across the bed.

After a few moments of this, Barnabas’ eyes groggily squint open in the late afternoon glow that pervades the space, and he makes a husky sound of befuddlement. In the hazy uncertainty of the still-unfamiliar space, he does not know where he is, and he casts around with his eyes for some point of reference before pushing himself upright.

Doing so without care proves to be a mistake—his entire body is stiff, bone and muscle protesting as if rust has gathered around it overnight, but it is not so bad as it could have been and doesn’t evoke more than one hazy expletive. He scrubs the heel of one hand into a sleep-heavy eye, and it is only then that the events of the night before float up to him out of the depths of his mind. “Oh,” he says thickly, and his gaze seeks and falls on Jonathan after a few moments. He cannot help the sudden awkward smile that hesitantly curves his lips, brightens his dozy golden gaze. “R-right, good morning—afternoon?”

Barnabas is normally fairly good at mornings, though he cannot claim he is his _best_ during them—but he will give himself this one. After all, it’s not even close to morning.

Turned halfway around and in the process of getting his pistol belt in order, Jonathan watches Barnabas grope around in the bed. First with concern in case he should need to stop Barnabas from hitting him and risking an accidental discharge of the weapon, and then amusement as time goes on and Barnabas continues. He must know by now that he cuddles in his sleep, surely. If not, Jonathan has decorum enough to not mention it.

“Good evening, almost,” Jonathan greets him. With a long yawn, he bends down to put on his boots, lacing them up tight: he may just need them for running tonight, but he hopes he doesn’t. With those on, Jonathan crosses the room to the pot of drinking water and fills up yesterday’s mug, wipes it dry on a dishtowel, and brings it over to press it into Barnabas’ hands. “How does this generally go for you? With the transformation?”

Barnabas accepts the mug gratefully, and he takes a deep drink of it to rinse away the dry and fuzzy taste of his morning mouth. He chuckles a little, tipping his head sheepishly as he lowers his hands to his lap, absently running his thumbs along the rim of the mug as he considers. Beneath the lingering soreness, he can feel the interminable itch of the wolf in his bones, and he lets out a breath. “The first night is always hardest,” he admits, “and usually the second is easier. When the moon comes up, I’ll—change. It’s… not as bad as it looks. And I am in there—it’s a little harder to think straight, but I can hear and understand, mostly.” He smiles apologetically and then looks up at Jonathan, a line of anxiety etched between his dark brows.

“But… you mustn’t let me bite you,” Barnabas cautions softly. “Please. I’d—I’d never forgive myself.” He hesitates, and then murmurs more quietly, “If it comes down to it, do whatever you must to stay safe. I mean that, Jonathan. Please.”

The first thought that Jonathan has upon being informed in no uncertain terms that Barnabas carries his conscious mind with him is relief: being able to communicate with him throughout the process could make this whole ordeal much easier. But that information also carries with it a horrible realization, one that churns foul in his gut—Barnabas had _heard him._ All the taunting, all the insults—Jonathan doesn’t even remember half of what he’d said. That whole time, he’d been hunting _Barnabas,_ not some feral mindless beast. 

“I, ah…” Being less-than-comfortable with direct eye contact, he generally tends to avoid it, but now he cannot look at Barnabas at all. “I... I need a moment. I will be back.” On his way out, he latches the cottage door as best he can on its broken lock.

Jonathan turns his back on the building entirely and stalks off towards the river. On its bank he finds a stone on which to kneel, and he plunges his hands into its crisp, cool flow to distract himself from breaking down entirely.

How on _Earth_ was Barnabas handling this so well? Sharing a bed with the man who would have gleefully murdered him? And Jonathan _knows_ he would have delighted in the kill—he’d have slain another great wolf, and in that same moment, Barnabas would disappear. How long would it take for his friends to realize he’s gone missing? A week? A month? Barnabas would be a memory, a spectre, and the world would never even know that he was dead.

And now Barnabas is speaking as though he’s _made peace_ with that idea. That his life already ended on the night that he was bitten. Saying things like “do whatever you must” to a man who shot him _twice_ just yesterday. Jonathan doesn’t want to—he would have an abominable time grappling with his conscience in the aftermath. But in the moment, he would pull the trigger without an ounce of hesitation if that’s what needed to be done. He knows this. Barnabas knows this.

Jonathan washes his face, and as he cups water in his hands he thinks of the lunar caustic stains he’d inflicted on Barnabas too. “No,” he tells himself through gritted teeth. “Not right now. Think on this later if you damn well must. Not now.”

He very badly wants a stiff drink, but river water will have to do. And besides, his physician’s mind tells him, if he did have wine or liquor, the charitable thing to do would be to give it to his patient. For now, he washes up, relieves himself out of direct view of the house, washes up again, and with an inhale to gather up his courage, he walks back into the cottage.

Jonathan takes a seat at the foot of the bed and clasps his hands in his lap. Though it pains him to do it, he looks straight into Barnabas’ face. “I am so very sorry. I had no idea of how aware you were. If I’d have known…” he trails off, unwilling to give voice to what he intended to say because the thought is simply too horrifying. “If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have.” Jonathan corrects himself, because it’s better all around to keep that statement ambiguous.

While Jonathan was gone, Barnabas struggled with himself—what had he done wrong? What had he said? And he is grateful when Jonathan returns, when his friend sits, though the space between them feels wider than just the physical. He does not push, does not ask, but when their gazes meet, he feels pinned, unable to look away. It is hardly the first time this has happened, though it is rare, and Barnabas feels some strange tug inside that knot of unidentifiable emotion. Sleep has not made any plainer to him what lies at the heart of it. 

“You didn’t know,” Barnabas tries, shifting painfully to face Jonathan more clearly, as if with words alone he might bridge the gap between them, though they feel flimsy and useless. He thinks of Jonah’s silver tongue and wishes his own were at least a little brighter. “And I didn’t tell you, like a fool. All of this could have been avoided, if I had only swallowed my damnable pride and come to you—or to anyone I trusted!—when the other wolf bit me.” He smiles, a bittersweet and humourless little lilt of lips, and then lets out a deep breath, both hands still fidgeting with the now-empty mug, thumbs toying with the handle and nimble fingers running along the rim in an absent, self-comforting gesture. “Or any time in the intervening _year._ This is… this is not your fault.” He looks away, as much to give himself space to breathe as to give it to Jonathan.

After a beat of silence he says, “It is easy to lay blame, to be guilty, I think. But I do not blame you. I may not understand why it is you that pursued me out here, but I feel if it were any other, I would be dead by now.” He tips his head to look at Jonathan and smiles, a careful thing this time. “For that, I’m grateful it was you.” 

He thinks but does not say, _and if I must die, then I will be grateful for that to be at your hands as well,_ and it startles Barnabas to realize that he means that, too. Knowing him now, he trusts that if he truly needs to be ended, Jonathan will do it with mercy and certainty. It will not be butchery as it would have been when he was fleeing in the forest, Barnabas thinks. His stomach aches, reminding him that it exists as he swallows down the sudden lump of cold remembered fear in his throat.

“No, you’re no fool. It makes sense to keep that to yourself—you didn’t know how we might react. Even if it was with disbelief, it would still be painful to have a traumatic event like that dismissed by those you thought were friends. I would have likely done the same.” Jonathan sighs, and he looks at the blankets, and he thinks about how he ended up here.

Jonathan has no single moment in his memory that explains his own condition. Instead, he has a lifetime’s worth of wishing harm upon the cruel-hearted and unjustly violent. He has treated ghastly wounds out in the field and he has treated the aftermath of violence in the city, and he has tended to the traumatized time and time again. Set broken bones and rubbed ointments into fresh bruises and listened to the explanations his patients gave, frequently not believing their initial stories because physical pain and fear look different. So Dr. Fanshawe would press them for more and assure them of the confidentiality between patient and physician, and sometimes, but only sometimes, they would have a different story to tell him.

The law is a thing for the protection of other people, Jonathan has long believed—not for men like him. There are many secrets he carries with him which could earn him a death sentence, but those are hidden things, shared only with those who also carry secrets of comparable weight. His heritage, though, is beyond concealment: though he has lived in Great Britain all his life, both of his parents were Indian-born. Suffice to say that Jonathan knows well what the lawmakers think about “those people,” to put it generously.

Jonathan has seen more justice done down the barrel of his gun than by the lawmaker’s quill. He doesn’t know why he took it up in the first place, only that he did, and knows too that he has no hope of putting it down.

He and Jonah have talked around this for years: the man is keen of insight and saw something of the hunter in Jonathan years ago, though Jonathan had never confessed to him of his deeds. Jonah supplies him with rumours of monsters on the loose: sometimes they are fabrications as far as Jonathan’s investigations can tell, but sometimes they carry truth with them. And, sometimes, those rumours are given an abrupt reason to stop. Jonah has never explained to Jonathan why his blood sings or why he does not tire or why he can track his quarry by the scent of their fear— _“You serve the hunt,”_ was all Jonah told him when directly asked. Cryptic, but true enough, Jonathan supposes. Hunting does occasionally feel like a devotional act.

Jonah had told him of the wolf out in the country. He remembers that. “Are you sure you shared word of your affliction with no one? Not even Jonah?” Jonathan has to ask. “Have you said or done anything suspicious in his presence?”

Barnabas lets out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and he shifts uneasily in his seat when Jonathan asks, turning his gaze to the side and looking at the ashes and embers that are all that remains of the fire that kept them so warm as they slept, and he tries to recall whether he tipped his hand with Jonah. He has been so careful to keep his affliction under wraps, but there have been a hundred, a _thousand_ little moments that could have given Jonah a part of the story, and he knows it. Jonah seems to be made of eyes, he thinks ruefully, each one aimed at a different part of a man, and secrets are hard to keep from him.

“I—I have never told him, no,” Barnabas finally says when he has finished woolgathering, carding the fingers of his admittedly-scattered memory through the strands of the last year. “Not in so many words, anyway. I… I cannot say whether I have given myself away in other ways, though. Wolf’s hair on my clothes, perhaps—or reacting to things others might not have smelled, or a bruise I didn’t conceal. And there’s the fact that I go missing for two or three days at the time of the full moon. Although I’ve been careful to construct a good lie, I think, when he’s pressed me about it.”

He raises a hand to his mouth, a nervous gesture, and begins to worry the edge of his thumbnail with lips and teeth distractedly. He knows he mustn’t move too much, but his body cries out with restlessness and hunger, the span of his freckled shoulders taut with the closeness of evening, and he shifts his weight again. His knee, the one on the leg that isn’t as deeply injured, has begun to bounce with sharp, frenetic movements. “You know how Jonah is,” he says finally, dismayed. “I cannot promise he does not suspect _something_ is amiss, anyway. And no one else would guess. Aside from you, no one else is so close a friend. Did I give _you_ any reason to suspect me?” He manages a crooked smile full of wry warmth at Jonathan, then resumes fretting at his thumb.

“Not in the slightest,” Jonathan immediately responds. He takes note of Barnabas’ restlessness, but he cannot in good conscience allow him out of bed unless necessary. It’d be nice if there were any books around that he could offer Barnabas to occupy himself—he didn’t pack anything in the way of entertainment, not even paper or writing supplies. So unless Barnabas has anything tucked away in this cottage, that will not be happening.

“We’re going to have to have a talk with him…” Jonathan muses, letting out a world-weary sigh. Shifts into a more comfortable position of crossing his legs at the ankles and leaning back in his sitting position, supporting himself with his hands, and stares at the ceiling for a time. “He’s the one who tipped me off about the first wolf. And the one who told me about you.” His head rolls on his shoulders as Jonathan stretches his neck from a night spent without a proper pillow. He pauses to look at Barnabas half-sideways. “Or about the wolf attacks, to be more specific. I should _hope_ that he had no ideas about your involvement.”

It occurs to Jonathan that he may as well get some rest while he still can, so he climbs up on the bed to properly lounge across the foot of it. Naturally, he keeps his boots away from the blankets. “You still haven’t told me what happened. How did you become like this?”

Barnabas watches Jonathan with a sort of warm, detached fixation, and he is quiet for a long few moments. He doesn’t want to have a talk about this with Jonah at all, doesn’t want to make himself any bigger a target than he already is, but he agrees: Jonah has to know. If he doesn’t, he will move heaven and earth to get the answers, and he supposes the wisest course of action is to simply give it to him before he topples the whole precarious house of cards down on Barnabas’ head without meaning to. Still, he interests himself deeply in his nails and fingers after a moment, and then turns his gaze back up at Jonathan, where he lounges—and he is struck again by the sight of his handsome friend. 

He cannot help his inclinations, but he will admit that he does not want to try very hard in this case. He wonders if it’s ridiculous to be shot by a man one night and in the very same twenty-four hour period, be uncomfortably reminded in multiple ways how attractive you find that same man. It’s exhaustion, he tells himself sagely, and hunger, and the close quarters. Nothing to do with the faint scent of the back of Jonathan’s shirt still in his nose from sleeping.

Barnabas swallows softly, blows a little air out of his nose, and smiles conciliatorily as he lowers his hand back into his lap. “There is not much to tell, I’m afraid,” he admits, “or at least not much _worth_ telling. I met a man—a friend, I hoped—when I was out one night at some function or other; I cannot recall what it might have been now, but he invited me out to an afternoon’s sport. We were to hunt foxes here in the woods with a friend of his, and then come here to the cottage afterwards to celebrate our victories or drink to our losses.” He pulls a wry face, then continues.

“I ought to have known something was odd when he told me he wanted to start late in the day, and then doubly so when he told me his friend had turned up unspecifiably ill and he’d sent him home, but I have never claimed to be the sharpest man and I accompanied him anyway. The rest is… as you might expect. The night fell, and I lost track of him thinking of other things; I turned a corner and suddenly the wolf was there, as large and terrifying as anything I’ve ever seen. I ran, of course, and I was doing well enough until I encountered a root that was jutting up out of the ground, and I tripped. And suddenly it was on me.” He raises his arm, and when he points them out, the scars of the bite show faintly still in the meat of his forearm. It has only been a year, but the marks look older, already silvery and faded, barely visible even under the faint olive of his skin. It’s clear that the wound had been a nasty ragged thing when it was fresh, though; the dips of wicked fanged teeth are still visible, if not terribly deep. They still dimple the skin just a little in places.

“I thought it would devour me, but a stone came to hand, and I put it to use where it might do the best good. And it did. I was able to put it off me and get away, though I think it may have been distracted by something else even then. The bite healed so quickly that I knew something must be strange about it—I didn’t change until the next month, though.” Barnabas lets out a breath, and then says softly, “That was a horror. I changed in my bedroom at the house in town. Fortunate that I ran instead of fighting then, too. I may be a coward, but I suppose it’s served me well enough in this case!”

Jonathan patiently listens to the tale, mentally filing all of that information away. The presentation of it is conversational, but it still carries the trappings of the same old folklore he grew up reading and hearing. Lured out to the woods by a near-stranger is a theme that comes up time and time again. “You’re lucky that it wasn’t the sìth,”1 Jonathan teases. “Or the Wild Hunt looking for something new to chase.”

The injury Barnabas displays piques Jonathan’s curiosity, and so he gets up and circles around the bed to sit next to him and examine it for himself. Grasping Barnabas’ arm, he turns it in the light, trying to see exactly where the line of the old scar tissue sits. “How quickly is ‘quickly’?” He asks, thumbing across the dips and raised pale lines. “Was it only the initial bite, or have you noticed enhanced healing abilities in general?”

“I am lucky!” Barnabas agrees with a laugh, cheeks colouring faintly despite himself. “Instead I hunt and chase things myself, which would be fine if it weren’t for the rampant property destruction, I think.” He lets Jonathan examine the scarred arm, and for the first time since it stopped its aching and throbbing, he lets himself get a good look at it too. 

In the light it is clear just how much damage was done by the werewolf’s jaws—the flesh was punctured and torn, clearly caught in an attempt to throw an arm up self-defensively. Barnabas’ arm is a sturdy thing, browned faintly with sun and well-turned with functional muscle, and it is only thanks to this that he still has motion in all his fingers.

“It’s mostly numb these days, I’m sorry,” Barnabas says with a sheepish look, feeling the brush of thumbs like a sparkle of faint staticky crackling somewhere in the vicinity of the scar. It is oddly intimate, even though it isn’t very sensitive to touch. “It had closed within days—I was afraid it would fester, but it healed nearly to this within a week, though it was still red and tender then, and it looked like this by the end of the month when I changed. Maybe less. I kept it under wraps mostly, though it was a near thing; once someone grasped me by the arm and I nearly came out of my skin. Other than this, though, I haven’t gotten many other wounds of any seriousness besides the usual bumps and scrapes. I did get kicked once by a cow, which bruised, but I could not say if that healed too quickly or not.” He seems to consider this a moment, aware he’s just spoken several mouthfuls, and then he adds with cautious, anxious optimism, “It was in the side, though, and I did favour it for a few days. Do you think my wounds will heal quicker now because of this…?”

“That’s _exceptionally_ fast,” Jonathan comments in reference to the bite’s healing time. He’s seen his fair share of animal bites, and this, he can tell, is one of the nastier ones he’s seen—certainly the largest. He stops looking and puts Barnabas’ arm back down.

“It’s a possibility. I’m not sure if the fact that they were silver bullets will affect how they heal.” Jonathan hoists himself up with a hand upon the bed post, and takes a moment to stretch his arms and look out the window. The light has gone from gold to orange, and twilight will soon be approaching. “I didn’t notice any sort of speedy recovery on the first wolf. But then again, I wasn’t using regular shot. So it’s difficult to tell.” Now that Barnabas has made clear to him that he didn’t exactly have a positive relationship with the wolf that spread its curse to him, Jonathan feels more comfortable talking about that. Though he does remember that Barnabas probably heard him boasting about it too.

Jonathan takes the empty mug from Barnabas’ hands and refills it, setting it on the hearth for now. The fire will need more fuel if it is to keep Barnabas warm tonight—even with the fur and all, he deserves to spend the evening comfortably. More pressing, however, is Barnabas’ physical care, leading Jonathan to bring the pot of water over to the bedside along with one of the cleaner linens. “Is it all right if I undress you? I would like to clean your wounds again before you change.”

Silver bullets, Barnabas thinks, and feels a bone-deep chill flicker up his spine; he looks up at Jonathan with a sort of awareness he hadn’t quite had before, a certain new respect that leaves him a little breathless. He has always acknowledged Jonathan as a peer, to be sure, but the memory of the hunter with his pockets apparently full of silver, all leather and teeth and taunting in the high, cold autumn moonlight, inspires a much more visceral level of respect that is new to him. He had come armed with the will and knowledge, although Barnabas ought not to have expected anything less, to see an end to a wolf whether natural-born or not. He thinks he will never forget the lesson, and the wolf’s instinct agrees, so close to the surface that he feels ill-jointed and strange.

He shakes it off—physically shakes his head to clear it—and then grins ruefully at Jonathan as he pushes the body-warmed woollen blanket aside.

“As little as I relish the idea of disturbing them,” Barnabas says reluctantly, “of course. I’ll be as good a patient as I can be.” Though his expression is significantly more careworn and anxious than usual, he still tries and almost succeeds at a comforting look, his head tipped up and his eyes bright. He tries to shift his position on the bed, relying on the sore but sturdy strength of his undamaged shoulders and arms, though his grip on the bed frame is white-knuckled as his seat is changed. “I’m not in much pain right now as long as I sit still, but this close to the moon rising it’s hard to be still anyway.”

Jonathan does what he can in supporting Barnabas while he moves, both by holding him and by putting some much-needed levity into his voice. “Yes, well, you’re going to have to disturb them sooner or later regardless,” he says, and it’s a thin wallpapering-over of the guilt he feels knowing that his actions are the reason behind Barnabas’ torment. But Barnabas has been such a remarkably bright beacon of positivity that he has to at least _try_ to respond in kind. Jonathan has apologized already, been forgiven already, and he is doing all that he can with the resources at hand to ensure Barnabas’ health and comfort, in that order. That’s all he _can_ do.

In undressing and unwrapping the bandages on Barnabas, Jonathan is as delicate as it is possible to be. He kneels on the floor and has Barnabas plant his foot on Jonathan’s thigh so that he may access the viciously wounded hamstring. With a dampened corner of the cloth or with wet fingertips, he removes pieces and cleans up smears of whatever he suspects to be foreign material in the wound. He had been thorough about cleaning it the first time, but with the quality of the lighting being much better now than it was at dawn, he’d rather be safe than sorry. Barnabas had run all over the woods last night, and there’s no telling what might have found its way in there—and with the talk of unnaturally fast healing being a possibility, Jonathan considers this to be especially important.

“You got lucky on these, too,” Jonathan comments, saying something for the sake of ending the prolonged silence. “Digging bullets out of men is a nasty business.”

Barnabas’ struggle, he hopes, is not as obvious to Jonathan as it is to him. With the fabric of his underwear laying crumpled and blood-stained on the floor beside Jonathan, he becomes aware too late that his self-consciousness has returned with the day’s rest, and he sits as still as he can manage, naked and quiet under the doctor’s purview. He manages not to blush, but it is a narrow thing, with Jonathan knelt before him, that handsome dark head bowed in concentration as he works. Certainly it is painful—even just the cool air moving across raw flesh makes the nerves in his leg sing in a protracted, wailing high pitch with fresh pain, let alone even the gentlest and cleverest hands or cloth—but he is distracted with the feel of Jonathan’s warm clothed leg beneath his bare foot, the brush of breath against his thigh. He is distracted with the scent of his own blood, his nostrils flaring slightly, and he is for a moment only glad that he cannot smell Jonathan still lingering in his nose. He feels as if that, combined with all the other things, might have simply been too much to bear with any dignity—if he had any dignity left to begin with.

Still, he is grateful for a reason to talk, about anything, to think about anything that isn’t pain or his increasingly urgent emotions or the approaching moonrise, and his words come out more briskly and perhaps more cheekily than he intends in his gratefulness, “Thanks to your aim, then!” He pauses, then, looking a bit contrite but not terribly. “Perhaps it was my tail you were distracted by. It is awfully fluffy, if I may be so bold as to mention it.” He laughs, but the sound is interrupted as he hisses softly with pain, trying hard not to flinch.

“It hardly seemed sportsmanlike to end things straightaway,” Jonathan flatly tells him, believing that being honest is a regular part of holding a conversation. For a much-too-long moment, Jonathan is as oblivious to the implications of that statement hanging in the air as he is to Barnabas’ discomfiture, and it is only when he’s taken a hold of Barnabas’ foot while he rotates to get at the other side of the wound that he realizes his misstep. He admitted, without hesitation, that the hours of pursuit had happened because _he wanted them to._ That he could have done the humane thing of shooting to kill an already-poisoned beast—and deliberately chose not to.

Jonathan takes another minute of cleaning out the wound to think about what to say next. When he settles on something, he dares not look at Barnabas’ face. “I am sorry. That was needlessly cruel to you.” He should have known, out in the woods, that the wolf was not a murderer: at every turn that it could have attacked and made a play to rip his throat open, it had fled instead. It had run all the way back to this very room, and had Jonathan been just a minute faster, Barnabas wouldn’t be alive, and he wouldn’t be here by his bedside, treating him.

With his work on this leg done, Jonathan wets the entire cloth, wrings it out, and holds it up against the wound to let its coolness leach into and soothe the angry inflammation. “I’m not sure which of us is the more monstrous one,” he murmurs, knowing full well what the answer to that is. It isn’t fair to Barnabas that he should be asked to tell his story without then offering up his own. He _could_ confide in Barnabas the same as he’d confided in Jonah—they do have some time before the day is out. But he hesitates out of consideration for Barnabas’ opinion of him, which he treasures a great deal: more today than this time yesterday, most certainly. For now, he does not offer up anything freely and simply sits on the bed at Barnabas’ side to attend to his other injury.

Barnabas is quiet for a long moment, not sure what to think of the admission, not sure what to say, though he is familiar with Jonathan’s blunt, sure honesty; he finds it refreshing, and he is used to being the small voice that reminds Jonathan to soften the knife-edge of his tongue. The memory of his panicked flight through the woods, hours of moonlit fear and the grim spectre of death looming cold over his shoulder, the twisting, gnawing hunger still with its fingers knotted in his belly— _unsportsmanlike_ feels cold, and Barnabas wants to protest, but he doesn’t. He draws a shallow, stinging breath, though, and not because of the physical pain.

He lowers his head, does not look at Jonathan either as he feels the moment between them widen, and then says doggedly into the quiet, “You did not know it was me,” as if that heals the wound; as if it undoes the trauma. The night before feels like a long, bone-bleached nightmare of blood and misery, and Barnabas does not know how to bring into synchrony the different faces of Jonathan he has seen in the last hours. He can neither reconcile nor divorce his familiar friend’s clear honesty and incisive wit from the hunter’s relentless, taunting terror, and he finds somehow that he does not need to. What he needs is reassurance, and he cannot stop the words from coming once he has started. “I do not know what I ought to feel about that, Jonathan, only that—I do not think you a monster. You know me; I-I’m not a wise or clever man, but I feel as if I have known you. I have always thought you a friend, and I still do.”

He lifts his head, and then says softly, “I hope that you still consider me your friend, too. It would be a greater loss than a pound of flesh and blood, Jonathan, to lose your confidence.”

No matter the breadth of the torment roiling in his head and no matter how nauseated the remorse in his stomach makes him feel, Jonathan still recognizes the signs of a friend in dire need of reassurance and will not let that go unattended. He is a healer, after all, and though his bedside manner may not be excellent, he is driven on to try his hand at soothing emotional harm. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Barnabas. I’ve seen you show insight and wit aplenty.”

There isn’t much to do for the wound on his hip, so Jonathan simply drapes the blanket over Barnabas’ lap and holds the cloth up to the reddened flesh, letting the dampness take up some of the itch and the uncomfortable heat. Jonathan is aware of their closeness in a way he hadn’t been since waking with Barnabas still clinging to him, still _valuing_ his company, flying in the face of all the harm Jonathan had caused him. Were he in Barnabas’ place, he would surely desire revenge—or, at the very least, a satisfactory reasoning as to why such a harrowing hunt was necessary. He doesn’t understand why Barnabas isn’t asking. Is he afraid to lose his caretaker? Is he afraid that the image he holds in his mind of what his friend Jonathan represents will become corrupted when exposed to the truth of it?

“Why aren’t you angry with me?” Jonathan asks, honestly at a loss. He leaves the cloth resting on Barnabas’ skin for a moment to remove and clean his glasses on his loose shirt-sleeve. “Why aren’t you asking questions? I came into these woods with enough sense to bring silver with me—I had the foresight to _poison you, Barnabas—_ why are you not furious? Why are you not terrified in thinking about all the other people I must have shot dead before having my go at you?” His teeth are gritted, biting back the damnably high pitch that agitation has forced his voice into. He wrestles control over it, speaking next in the deeper, masculine register he is accustomed to using. Glasses back on his nose, he looks straight into Barnabas’ eyes. “I don’t _understand.”_

The cool damp of the cloth feels good against his fevered skin, but it is less a balm to him than the fact that Jonathan has not left his side yet, and he lets himself consider this for a moment. When he answers, it is slowly, his words chosen with care. “I could… I could ask questions,” Barnabas says, and he does not comment on the pitch of Jonathan’s voice, or on the confusion, or any number of things that might have caused him distress. “If you want me to, I could ask why, I could—I could be angry, I could want to know why the world sent _you_ of all people it could have sent to hunt me. I… I could be afraid of you, judge you for whatever sins you may have committed against others. But what would be the point?” He asks it with careful, quiet earnestness, meeting Jonathan’s gaze with his own, level and gentle.

“If you want to tell me what brought you to this, you will. Jonathan, I have—I have never pried for your secrets. I only want to know of you what you want to tell me. Otherwise, they don’t _matter_ to me. It doesn’t matter, do you hear me?” He says it with an unexpected fierceness, his dark, handsome brows drawn together with a furrow between, the golden brightness of his eyes focused and sure, his conviction unshakable. “I have been living on time I’ve borrowed for the last year; by rights I ought to be dead. I ought to have found myself at the wrong end of a pistol months ago. But time—time is so short, Jonathan.”

He reaches out, touching Jonathan’s knee with breathtaking earnestness, his palm warm and his fingers curving gently across it, and the light of the deepening evening is caught on the planes of his face and in the uncombed, sleep-ruffled tangle of his dark hair, on the unusual intensity of him. “If I had died, there would only be my brother to mourn me. I know where I stand with our circle of friends. Perhaps you hunted me, perhaps it was cruel and perhaps I was afraid, but I have been afraid these many months of someone finding out this great secret. Either way it turned out, with me dead or alive, I am no longer the only one carrying the weight of it.”

Barnabas looks away finally, toward the window, ashamed despite himself at the sudden burn behind his eyes. “If your secrets and reasons would be easier to bear with a second pair of shoulders beneath them as well, then I offer mine. I can’t claim to understand, but I will listen, and I will try.”

Jonathan spends a time staring at the hand upon his knee, trying to process why it is that Barnabas is so determined to comfort _him._ And it is a comfort: a grounding force that keeps him locked in the here and now when he would have wanted to excuse himself from this difficult conversation, as he had done earlier. There is a finite end to this one because soon enough, Barnabas will be a beast and not a man—but before that, preparations will need to be made. So Jonathan stays, and he listens, and when Barnabas dares mention not being mourned, Jonathan’s head snaps up to stare him down.

“That isn’t true,” Jonathan emphatically insists. “Others would mourn. Jonah would. I know _I_ most certainly would. Don’t say that.” He embraces Barnabas then, squeezing him with all the fervent affection he holds for the man. His hand splays open across the broad plane of Barnabas’ back and Jonathan notices just how warm his bare skin is when he rubs it. Displays of intimacy normally come so rarely to him that he tends to fixate on the details. “None of that talk,” he adds.

The embrace lasts long, and by the time Jonathan releases Barnabas from it, he has decided on what he is to say. Not all of it—he is mindful of Barnabas’ current physical state and is aware that his memory of this may be poor, going forward—but he will tell him some. “A few years ago, I tracked and killed a man. I am not going to go into why or how tonight, for it is a gruesome story, and better suited to a comfortable parlour with a warm fire than to here. But rest assured I had my reasons, and that this man had done atrocities enough to merit a swift death a hundred times over. And a swift death is what I gave.” He sounds bitter and sour in the telling. This is not a thing that Jonathan enjoys recounting.

“After that, I was... changed. Murder changes everyone, I think, but I do not mean in the way it affects the conscience. I started having dreams, at first—that I was a hunter or a predatory beast in pursuit of prey: sometimes game, sometimes human. I would wake with my blood pounding in my ears, full of excitement and vigour. Ready for a _chase.”_ Even as he describes it, Jonathan becomes aware of his quickening heart rate; the drift of his fingers towards his sidearm. He folds his hands in his lap and continues.

“I did not enjoy that first killing, you have to understand. I felt a sort of satisfaction, I suppose, at ridding the world of an abominable man, and I appreciated the thanks I received, but I did not wish to do it again. I didn’t understand why I was having these desires to do violence—I served in the _Army,_ for God’s sake! I’d seen enough violence to last a lifetime.” Jonathan runs a hand through his hair and breathes to take the edge off the hysteria creeping into his words.

“So I thought I might go on a hunting trip to be rid of these... fantasies, as I thought of them. And, just to be safe, I went alone. I suppose this sounds familiar to you,” he says with a wry smile. “I used to find hunting distasteful, and I was never that good of a shot. But I took up my rifle regardless and stalked until I found a stag to shoot: a huge, mighty thing. I didn’t even _hit it_ the first time. Nor the second. On a whim, I ran after it—it was much faster than I was, naturally, and it soon got away. But the same energy that I had whenever I woke from those dreams was with me, and it pushed me on, and I knew _exactly_ which way to go. Hours passed and I did not even consider stopping to eat or drink. Night fell and I swear to you that my vision was almost as sharp as it was in the daylight. And when at last I wounded the tired beast, I could taste its blood in the air, Barnabas—and this is going to sound absurd, I know, but I could track it by the scent of its fear. Or, perhaps, not so absurd. That’s how I tracked you.”

With a heavy sigh, Jonathan lets his shoulders drop. “Something sunk its claws into me that day. The joy of the hunt has been with me ever since. I do not feel alive like I do when I’m on the trail. I swear to you that I have made no infernal pact, nor indebted myself to any fair folk—but I cannot help but feel that some otherworldly thing acts through me. And it hungers for blood, always.”

Barnabas’ head is full of the feel of Jonathan’s warm body against his own, the hand on his back, the comfort of his words; his nose fills with the scent of his friend, and for a moment he does not think, his head full of blessed, complete silence, the endless chatter and twitter of sparrow-quick thoughts drowned out briefly. The wolf, so close to the surface now, knows this scent too, and it is _still_ in response to the scent-memory, like a fawn might hide deep in the grass to avoid its ravening jaws. Even when, after that moment of connection, they part, Barnabas remains distracted for a beat with an ache of relief. 

Jonathan says he would feel the loss of him if he were gone, and he believes him since he has never known his friend to lie. He is not sure Jonah would mourn him, but if Barnabas loses himself to the wolf then he selfishly wants there to be a hole in the world where he ought to be. It is a cruel desire and he knows it, so he does not give voice to it, swallowing the thought down and sublimating it beneath his own guilt. Instead, he listens to Jonathan with absolute attention, his gaze focused on Jonathan’s face and the motions of his mouth. He doesn’t ask for eye contact, only observes with a narrow and certain focus.

Much of the story he feels a kinship with—the desire to hunt, the ache to chase and catch and savage—but just as much of it he is unfamiliar with. Still, Barnabas does not flinch away from the telling; he takes it on to the last drop, until Jonathan’s voice has stilled, and even once he has gone quiet, Barnabas doesn’t speak for a long moment. He lets this knowledge roll about in his head, considering it with as much of his focus as he can muster with his stomach aching with hunger, and then finally he says, “It _is_ different from my situation, but I think the two of us are of a feather whether we like it or not.” He smiles with a sort of wry, self-effacing humour. “I do not think you invited this—this _thing_ into you any more than I persuaded the wolf to bite me, but the effect has been astonishingly similar.”

He pauses, weighs his words and thoughts, and then asks soberly, “Do you… hurt people, then? Innocent ones, I mean. I wouldn’t believe it if anyone else told me you did, but I know you wouldn’t lie to me.” He turns his gaze on Jonathan then, and tries to look steady and neutral, to keep the concern from his expression; he succeeds, except for the line of worry between his dark brows that gives the lie to his calm.

That Barnabas would so transparently make his trust known is startling: he has so much _faith_ in him, and Jonathan is at a loss for what to do with it. People lie—he’s lied to Barnabas already with a dozen different explanations at a hundred different social engagements about what sort of entertainment he’s been occupying himself with lately.

But this—Jonathan wouldn’t lie to him about this. “I do not,” he assures Barnabas, level as a well-set cornerstone. “That’s why I asked if you were.”

Jonathan, remembering his physician’s duties, turns the cloth over and holds it up to Barnabas’ wound again. The side against his palm is lightly marked a dirty pink with blood, both yesterday’s and fresh. “This is going to sound vaguely abhorrent, I’m aware, but the guilty have more to fear from being caught. And whatever it is that guides me, I think it appreciates that. So I try to find people who would never see the inside of a prison cell or the top of a gallows. Those of reputation and standing who use their positions to exploit others.”

Conscious of the time, he instructs Barnabas to hold the cloth there while he attends to the fire. He uses up the last of the kindling in the basket to get it going again: there is an axe outside, he saw, and he doesn’t mind splitting a few logs during the night to replenish the supply. “I am well aware of my own hypocrisy in this,” he says, raising his voice to be heard over the scrape and spark of wood being arranged and set to blaze. “But I like to think of it as making the most of an unpleasant situation. And to be honest, it is easier to break the rules knowing that society would love to see men like us hang regardless,” Jonathan says with cutting spite into the fire.

A moment later, when he’s stood back up and brushing ash from the front of his trousers, he realizes how his words could be interpreted as accusatory and he turns to Barnabas to clarify. “Ah, that isn’t in reference to the violence. I meant... certain preferences. Activities. Activities involving men of similar preferences.” As he comes over to collect the crumpled pillow of his coat and shake it out into something presentable, Jonathan realizes that he’s sweating. Why had he felt the need to bring that up?

The long wave of relief that crashes over Barnabas is palpable at the knowledge: monsters they both might be, but he can bear this. Ethical. Not bloodless, because a hunt is rarely that, but it is easier to swallow when he knows those that Jonathan has caught and given an end to are deserving of such tender ministrations. Still, it is not an easy thing to sit with—but none of this has been. It is no harder than anything else, and Barnabas has decided with the wolf’s clear certainty and perspective that none of it can be changed, and so it does not bear agonizing over right now. 

His palm lays across the cloth obediently, and he feels the heat of his slow-healing flesh radiating through the cool, damp fabric, the rough scant scabbing ragged against his palm. “Hypocrisy or not, we both have had to make the best of our situations,” Barnabas agrees as amiably as he can manage, his stomach giving an audible grumbling groan.

He ignores it uncomfortably, shifting restlessly in his seat—the unintentionally barbed words only barely find purchase in his distracted state, but the clarification sticks and Barnabas swallows softly. He hadn’t thought he had enough blood left for it, but his cheeks begin to heat, colouring slightly. His free hand absently scratches the freckled skin of his collarbone with awkwardness as he looks down at his lap. “Right,” Barnabas agrees, and he doesn’t like the breathlessness in his own voice. “A-ah… the inclinations we share. Illegal, immoral, you know. Clearly we are a menace.” He manages a smile, feeling a little winded and foolish despite himself, but he cannot stop his wagging tongue. 

_Men like us,_ Jonathan said, and Barnabas feels an answering lift of feeling within the hard knot of emotion in his chest. All the things that Barnabas has not dared to say, he must have some idea—or perhaps he only knows of Barnabas’ inclinations that he too had applied himself with fervour to the act of pleasuring Jonah—but he doesn’t have the words to say them now, to bare feelings that are still in disarray. “In… in any case,” he continues as smoothly as he can, “we are… somewhat beyond breaking rules, I think.” He forgets to hold the cloth, then, raising both hands to scrub them back through his rumpled hair, his anxious eyes sliding to the window. He feels as if there isn’t enough time, not enough moments left before the moon rises. Better to keep his own counsel than say anything else and leave Jonathan with words to say and only the wolf to say them to. Besides, he has the night to survive.

Jonathan’s eyes follow, looking out at the sunset glow filtering in through the trees, lighting them up warm to spite the chilly air. They each have a long, tense night ahead of them: but at least they’ve slept, and at least they’ve reached an understanding of how to approach this. Jonathan pulls on his unfashionably large overcoat and fills his pockets with gloves, shot, and powder.

“I would rather you not leave this house at all tonight and risk worsening or dirtying your wounds,” he says to Barnabas as he goes about his preparations. “Ideally, I would have you stay in here while I keep guard outside and ensure you do not leave.” A glance at the abused door and its ruined lock. “Given the state of the lock, a lot of that is going to be on faith that you remember that it’s best for your health to stay indoors. Although I suppose I could pile up some firewood in front of the door as a sort of alarm.”

Jonathan gathers up the fire-starting tools to put in his knapsack, which in turn he puts on. He raids the kitchen next for things he can use to make his watch comfortable: a skillet, a mug, a sauce pot for heating water. Finds the tea too, and borrows what he needs to brew it. “Yesterday you mentioned bringing a dinner with you that you didn’t eat—where is that? I think it might be best to remove temptation from you if you are dedicated to maintaining your fast.”

Barnabas’ stomach growls again piteously, and for a moment his determination wavers, but he sighs. “I’ll certainly stay put. I don’t relish the idea of running about either, and the second night is always easier on my poor head anyway. Not to say that it is ever _easy,_ but…” He gestures with empty hands, sighing as he watches Jonathan make his preparations. “I am sorry you’ll be outdoors all night, though.”

At the mention of his dinner, Barnabas gestures: there is a knapsack of his own propped up against the wall in the kitchen area. He thinks longingly of the cold chicken wrapped in paper, of the bread that had been fresh only the night before, and the little wedge of cheese he’d been meaning to slice onto the bread—he thinks of melting it over the fire until the bread is toasted and the cheese is bubbly, the satisfying fullness of it in his mouth, and then to follow it with a slice of savoury meat—and his mouth is suddenly awash with saliva. He swallows convulsively, lets out a deep and heavy sigh. “There’s bread, cheese, and chicken. And,” Barnabas says regretfully, “a bit of pastry. For dessert. You are welcome to it as payment for the trouble; it ought to be fresh enough.”

In full view, Jonathan roots around in Barnabas’ pack until he finds all of the aforementioned items, putting them into the skillet and the pot along with the other things he intends to take outside with him. Already, Jonathan has decided that he will not be eating the bread or the pastry: he’d brought his own, and it would be an abominable thing indeed to steal an injured man’s dessert. The chicken yes, since that’d go bad, and the cheese too, perhaps, for the same reason. 

“Who knows, I may grow bored of guarding and go off hunting for something for you. I did pack regular shot,” Jonathan muses. Whether or not he will is highly dependant on both of their temperaments, come nightfall: if Barnabas is restless, Jonathan knows it’s highly likely that he would feel a responsibility to stay. “If I do, is there anything that you prefer not to eat when you’re a wolf? Birds? Foxes?” He can’t imagine feathers in his teeth to be a pleasant sensory experience, and birds can be such a pain to clean.

Despite the offer he made willingly, Barnabas—ever a man with an insatiable sweet tooth—cannot help but be sad at the loss of his dessert. It is one of his favourites, after all, but if he survives the night he will be able to get more. Pastry is easy to come by; life is not. Still, wistfully he imagines the flaky-sweet crispness of it on his tongue, and it’s a torment. His jaws ache to eat it and his stomach pleats itself up against his spine, crumpling onto itself. “If you do, I certainly wouldn’t complain,” he says, smiling a sideways little smile and trying not to imagine a hot fresh flow of blood over tongue and teeth and muzzle, the scarlet steaming heat of it in the cold night; he craves it, like a man in the desert craves water, with the sudden hard ache of an addict. 

“Rabbit is best,” he listens to himself say, swallowing again against the hunger. The smell of the chicken is in the air and he raises a hand to rub his nose between thumb and forefinger, tries not to wonder if Jonathan will be disturbed as he crunches bone between his jaws, if Jonathan will _watch_ him eat whatever he is given. He licks his lips and tries to bring his errant imagination back under control. “But anything will be fine. Even fish. I admit I’m not terribly partial to foxes, as you say. Although their tails are fun to play with.” He grins with droll, gruesome humor, looking simultaneously a little ill. “Sorry, is that morbid?”

Jonathan shrugs, and his returned smile is full of grim amusement. “No more morbid than wearing one as a stole, I would say. I can see that this talk is tormenting you: I’ll bring all of this outside.” Gathering up what he can into his arms, Jonathan does so and sets everything down, pack and all, on the pile of firewood outside, since he cannot tell just yet whether or not the ground out there is damp. Finding a specific spot to set up camp can wait: he’d like to get as much time with Barnabas as he can when there is still an opportunity to converse with him.

Back indoors, Jonathan puts the improvised chamberpot in Barnabas’ reach and suggests he use it while he goes to refresh the water in the stock pot, filling it up nearly to the top to ensure that a wolf would have an easy time in getting to it. That gets set down close to the fire under the assumption that Barnabas would likely want to spend most of his night there. “Do you need anything else?” Jonathan asks. “The mattresses could use a good shake, but I’m not sure there’s time enough for that—would you like them laid in front of the fire to rest upon?”

While Jonathan is in and out, Barnabas avails himself of the pot with neat discretion, glad of a reason to distract himself, and soon stands in front of the window with the blanket wrapped around him to preserve what little modesty he has left. When Jonathan asks, though, he turns around and smiles a crooked smile. Much of the light has faded from the high branches and all that remains is the crimson slant of dying sunset, staining the woods with a deep carmine hue, casting long and jagged shadows through the trees. Somewhere outside, an early nightbird is calling with a soft and melancholy cry. The moon is so close he can feel it in his teeth, ringing like the scrape of metal on stone, and his hands are flexing at his sides, finger-bones aching like a man that’s grown old before his time. He is distracted, the expression on his face distant and far away as if he is listening for something just below the threshold of hearing.

Still, he turns back to Jonathan when he speaks, and he lets out a breath. “As little as I’m looking forward to this, I suppose lying in front of the fire might be nice. And—and when you come in, in the morning, the mattresses will be warm already.” Barnabas manages a smile. He is leaning heavily on his less-injured leg, but he can move now, halting and painful, so long as he leans on the wall or windowsill. “I can help?”

Mindful of potentially knocking it over in the process of rearranging the bed, Jonathan dumps the chamberpot outside immediately. When he sets it down, he sternly tells Barnabas, “You will do no such thing. Doctor’s orders.” Jonathan temporarily removes his coat and lays it out on the little table with the bed’s pillow: he isn’t sure about the wisdom of giving it to Barnabas when he runs the risk of his claws tearing it open but, he supposes, that would be Barnabas’ problem to deal with. “You go on mooning about by the window,” he teases when he gets close to him again.

One by one, Jonathan lifts the mattresses off the bed and stacks them up in their proper order on the scarred floor: straw, chaff, flock. And although he said he wouldn’t, Jonathan still gives the last one at least a bit of a fluffing-up. Then the sheet and pillow, and last of all Barnabas himself, led with Jonathan’s weight to lean on and eased down as carefully as they can together manage. 

“There you are,” and Jonathan keeps in his crouch when addressing Barnabas, deliberately keeping himself respectful and unintimidating, since he knows Barnabas likely has anxieties aplenty about tonight. “Now, I’m going to keep close by unless I tell you otherwise. Will you have enough presence of mind to nod or shake your head in response to questions, do you think?”

Though he knows it says nothing of his own character that he can’t help much, Barnabas still feels a cold little welling of shame in his belly as he watches Jonathan work, and it lingers, though he knows his friend to be more than equal to the task. Besides, the mattresses are not new, the ticking worn with use, and they were never heavy or lavish to begin with—still, the fluffing of the topmost one and the movement of the others simply being hauled and rearranged has lent them a new loft, and he sinks into them gratefully. Temporarily he is distracted from his physical pain and restlessness by the pleasant combination of give and firmness between himself and the floor, and the warm radiance of the good fire that Jonathan rekindled, and he gives a low, soft sigh of relief, eyes closed momentarily to enjoy the new comforts of the hearth despite the angry throb at the back of his thigh.

His eyes flicker open again after a moment, and he watches Jonathan without speaking for a long moment. He is still human, but not long for it, and the expression in his eyes is strange. “I don’t know,” he admits, “but I will try, certainly. I’ve never had occasion to find out whether I can respond to commands or not. But I can’t think of any reason why I shouldn’t be able to.” He smiles reassuringly. “Please bear with me, though—it takes some time to get my senses back under me even in the best of times.”

That is good enough for Jonathan, who nods his understanding. To ensure Barnabas’ comfort going forwards, he throws a couple of logs on the fire and watches for a moment to ensure that they will catch. It’s the least that he can do.

“I know it will be miserable, but you can endure this. Try to get some rest.” Jonathan gives one last reassuring squeeze to Barnabas’ blanketed shoulder, looks out the bed’s window at the fading sunlight, and rises to his feet. Wraps himself up in his coat, and goes to attend to the evening’s work.

First, the slapdash barricading of the door with a small stack of firewood. It’s honestly not meant to present an obstacle in the first place—a child could move it with force and determination—but it does hold the door closed to help with the draft and, with a couple of precariously placed logs, would provide notice of a potential escape attempt and give Jonathan time to prepare. He pictures himself training his pistol on the door and commanding Barnabas back indoors, firing off a warning shot when he does not obey. He hopes it will not have to come to that: he hopes, for Barnabas’ own health, that he listens to his rational mind and remains comfortable in bed where he can neither cause nor suffer any further harm.

Next, the matter of starting a campfire for himself. Unused to this particular type of effort, Jonathan finds splitting logs to be more laborious a task than he anticipated, and by the time he feels satisfied with the amount of kindling he’s produced, he can feel the sweat running down his back and sides. He wishes he could bathe, he truly does, but he knows that giving the wolf any chance at all to creep up on him would be a fool’s mistake. For now, he simply splashes cold water on his face and slaps his cheeks to wake himself in the absence of any hot coffee or cocoa. Tea can come later but water will do, drinking from his cup as he leans against the wall of the cabin to catch his breath, looking in on how Barnabas is doing.

The transformation tonight, when it comes, does not bring with it the intensity of the prior night. Barnabas is still weary from the hunt, and the change comes for him when the last of the sunlight has faded. The moon isn’t even high yet before Barnabas, waiting still and silent in his own quiet mire of dread, finds the first spasms wracking his body and twisting his bones.

He spills forward out of the mattress, tangled in the blankets, and for once he does not cry out, though there is a muffled, garbled swear as his elbows find the wooden floor. The change is always traumatic; there is nothing to do to ease the process but breathe through it and let his body work out the steps on its own, and Barnabas holds in his mind’s eye Jonathan outside the door in the cold of the night, protected only by his own wits and his steady hand. If he does not fight, if he does not try to control the progression, it rolls over him with something approaching grace. When his legs are changed, though, he cannot avoid letting out a sound that is half a wolf’s whine and half a man’s yelp of pain as the wounds are twisted this way and that in the reshaping. In the end, though, he finds himself flat on his furry belly, legs akimbo. His tongue lolls out of his mouth, and he lays still, feeling boneless and spent, panting to fill the broadened bellows of his lungs. Somehow there is very little fresh blood from his wounds, which Barnabas does not forget to be grateful for.

The change has cost him dearly in energy that he did not have to spare, but he appraises himself in thought like a gentleman at the door—spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch—before he allows himself to relax. Swimming in the wolf’s instinct, he sniffs the air and catches the scent of the hunter nearby, covering the mattresses, saturating the air. _Jonathan,_ Barnabas reminds himself as his hackles rise, and he shakes his head hard, trying to reassert dominion over the wolf. _Not ‘the hunter’, **Jonathan.**_ The thick ruff of otter-dark fur subsides, though not as quick as he would like.

It is a chancy thing, but their gambit has worked. His belly is miserably empty and his body feels weak as a new fawn, but he doesn’t think he could rampage across the woods even if he wanted to. It makes it much easier for Barnabas to seize the reins again, to master the wolf.

He becomes gradually aware, in a way he has not been before, of the way the bones and muscles articulate beneath his skin, of the slow and steady pound of the enormous heart in the deep barrel chest, of the acuteness of his hearing and the way everything else seems secondary to the vast wealth of input that floods his nose. The body is his, both of them are, but he is nevertheless as unfamiliar with the wolf’s senses as he assumes a wolf would be in his own furless, upright form. It is new, the feeling of being at the controls of this shape; Barnabas has only ever tried to steer it fully in bursts and extremities, to keep it from the worst of the atrocities it wishes to commit, but they are sublimated now, violence close to hand but not imminent. It is like sitting in a room before a weapon that has done a great evil, and Barnabas finds the hands of his heart drawn to it less and less as the moments tick by to the sounds of fire in the hearth and some foolish nighttime bird outside singing its beguiling and deeply distracting song.

Finally, he feels in control enough to rise swaying to his feet. He carefully marshals his forces, walks to the pot of water and drinks deeply, smelling the river in the water and the hands of the man who carried it. He soon finds himself, without meaning to, sitting at the doorway of the cottage, looking up at it. The wolf thinks fondly of the river and fat silver fish that live there, and Barnabas reminds himself of his purpose—and he makes a displeased, explosive sound that’s half sneeze and half whine before returning to the mattresses with his tail hung low. He flops his enormous weight down onto them in an attitude of utter despair, half on the bed and half off, and lays there with his great brown head between his paws, looking very put-upon.

Barnabas is no longer in the bed when Jonathan arrives at the window: Barnabas as he recognizes him is gone, and there is only the wolf, firelit and furred and more massive than any predatory beast he’s ever seen. Jonathan thinks that bears must be this size—though he’s never seen one in person—but as he watches it lap up water and go sit in front of the door like it’s awaiting its master’s return, he cannot help but regard it as some great hunting hound or dog of legend. Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf who nursed them, perhaps; or the cù-sìth, the fairy dog, whose soul-rending howl is enough to kill a man from fright. A minute later, Barnabas sneezing and flopping listlessly on the bed rather spoils that majestic illusion. Jonathan snorts out a laugh and leaves him be.

In the clearing in front of the house, there is a pole propped up horizontally on a frame: for the drying-out of hides, Jonathan assumes, or to tie a butchered animal to and smoke it over an open flame. By this, as he expected, he finds the remnants of an old fire pit, overgrown and choked by weeds. With his gloves on, he removes what greenery he can within the circle of stones, and by twilight he moves his pack and cookware and everything else over to his chosen campsite. He cannot remember the last time that he has built a fire outside, but the weather is calm and clear and doesn’t present much of a difficulty, and soon he is sitting on a stump and warming his bare hands by its glow.

From then until the moon is high in the star-freckled sky, Jonathan is content to occupy himself with simple tasks: once there are coals to cook with, he slices up his half-eaten loaf of bread as best he can with his hunting knife and toasts it in the skillet, throwing in a couple pieces of salt pork first to render off their cooking fat. Once flipped, each of these is topped with Barnabas’ chicken and cheese and allowed to warm and melt. (Jonathan opened up the kerchief with the pastry in it first in his search for these, but temptation was no match at all for his compassion for Barnabas and he promptly wrapped it back up without even tasting it.) As he eats, finding the meal to be altogether pleasant, he refreshes the coals and heats up water for his tea. It takes longer than he expected, but it eventually gets there, and he sips his tea slowly as he watches the cottage door for any sign of movement. None comes.

There will be many hours left of darkness, Jonathan realizes. Many hours left of sitting without anything to occupy himself: no letters to write, no books to read—he’d settle for _sewing,_ honestly, because at least that would keep his hands busy. He sips his tea and his trigger finger taps against the cup, restless. His toes curl and uncurl in his boots. His leg bounces in place. Every rustle of the leaves; every snap of twig whether in the trees or underfoot draws his immediate attention, so accustomed is he to the crackle and breath of the campfire. He understands why Barnabas comes here every month: the forest _beckons._

Jonathan sets his empty cup down and moves his flammable things back behind the stump he sits upon. His rifle’s weight is a comfort in his hands when he picks it up and he almost believes it must be restless too, leaning up against the drying pole all night. Jonathan approaches the cottage, finds the window he assumes to be the closest to the hearth, and knocks on the pane insistently but not aggressively, to alert the wolf inside.

“Barnabas?” His voice is raised to be heard through the glass, but the volume stays below a yell. “Barnabas, I’m going hunting for a while. _Please stay indoors._ Nod if you can understand me.” Jonathan shields his eyes from the moonlight to better see what the wolf is doing as he awaits a response.

The smell of food filters into the cottage, and Barnabas heaves a big sigh. The hunger in his belly is a sharp and gnawing thing, and he breathes in the good smells of toasted bread, of sizzling chicken and melted cheese, and as he lays in his cozy self-imposed exile, saliva runs in his mouth as he licks his chops. When he can bear it no longer in patient silence, he heaves himself to his feet, paces the narrow length and width of the cottage, his wet dark nose moving constantly. He finds a low whine issuing forth from his throat, and then he settles again in a lazy crouch in front of the door. 

He lays down there, pressing his nose to the crack below it, and the picture comes clear of the woodpile stacked in front of it: it is a story in scents, of a fox that had urinated on one of the logs when it was still a tree, of a family of rats that had borne young in the pile a season ago, of a mushroom colony that is attempting with limited success to frill and shelf the dead wood with new life. It is a distraction because the savoury smells are still wafting on the air, but Barnabas lets his nose unfold the tale of the woodpile to him as a more than welcome diversion from his belly. At least he isn’t drooling on the bed.

It is into this occupation that Jonathan’s knocking at the window intrudes, and Barnabas lifts his head so fast he scrapes his nose on the door. His tail wags unbidden, and his ears twitch as he turns to face the window nearest the hearth. He scrambles over, and without thinking, he raises himself up, enormous paws scrabbling on the windowsill before his head appears, separated from Jonathan by only the glass in the window. This suddenly brings them face to face, dark eyes to honey-gold. He presses his nose against it, causing the glass to fog. Impatiently, he grumbles low in his chest and waits for it to clear. Barnabas is bored stiff, and he has never made a good patient without a concerted effort and sufficient distractions, neither of which he has the attention (or thumbs) for in this shape. Still, he coordinates an all-over shake of his head, all pointed ears and jowls, as his best nod to indicate he understands.

Jonathan _almost_ flinches to see the wolf appear this close, drawing back from the glass out of concern. Watches the great beast manage a clear nod, and again he cannot help but think of an eager dog’s enthusiasm. It’s probably fortunate that there is a wall separating the two of them: not because of the wolf's teeth so much, but rather concern for getting bowled over by its bulk.

Nodding along with him for a moment, Jonathan continues. “Good. I don’t want to be shooting anything with silver bullets if you’re going to be eating it and these weapons can’t really be safely unloaded, so I’m going to need to…” Jonathan, realizing that this is likely to be incomprehensible to a wolf’s simple mind, trails off as he talks. “I need to fire the gun,” he tries instead, loud and clear. “So don’t panic when you hear it. Go lie down. I’ll be back soon.”

In full view of the window in case Barnabas is inclined to watch and better prepare himself for the sound, Jonathan walks off a number of paces, shoulders his rifle, and selects a particularly large tree knot as his target. Black powder weapons are _loud,_ and no matter how inundated to that sound he is, hearing the noise crack and echo through the otherwise quiet night still jumps his heart rate significantly. While he waits for the barrel to cool, he approaches the tree, listening all the while to the cabin to ensure that Barnabas is not about to bolt from fright. The bullet hit a little closer to the edge of the knot than he would have liked, Jonathan sees, but he has never claimed to be an expert marksman. Still much better at patching up wounds than inflicting them. He reloads the rifle, making sure to use the duller and heavier lead shot this time around, chooses a direction on a whim, and slinks off.

Barnabas does indeed watch, standing on his back paws with his front ones still propped on the windowsill, even after Jonathan has turned his back on him. His breath fogs the night-cold window and he has no hands with which to wipe it away, so it is through the grey mist of his own respiration that he watches the dark figure of Jonathan take aim in the moonlight.

The sound of the gunshot does not precisely cause him to panic, but an involuntary whine escapes him as everything in his big lupine body tenses for the blow that never comes. He disengages from the window clumsily, scoring yet another set of grooves in the ill-used wall of the cabin. His heart is pounding wildly, and in his anxiety, he moves to gather himself back onto the bed. He will not admit he’s trembling a little, but he settles down to chew on a rough spot on his foreleg, groaning softly to himself. 

It’s troubling—the sound of a gunshot has never disturbed him so before now, and he isn’t sure whether to blame the wolf’s instincts or his own experiences for his reaction, which subsides with glacial slowness. Perhaps it is the confinement, Barnabas thinks—nowhere to run, nowhere to escape to, his fight-or-flight tightly restrained as he keeps the firmest leash on the wolf’s desires. Still, he shoves his nose against the mattress and rolls his eyes closed. He does not think he will sleep.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Footnotes:**  
>  1 Scottish Gaelic term for fairy. Pronounced “shee.” [return to text]
> 
> Adorable art done by [idlecreature](https://idlecreature.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> **Content warnings:**  
>  Gender dysphoria, gore, and PTSD. Mentions of execution, gun violence, hanging, hunting of animals, murder, period-typical homophobia, poisoning, racism, and transphobia. [return to top]


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I walked the road from Tucson to San Antonio  
>  With the smell of blood on my breath  
>  Ninety days of sweat and dirt feels like one night  
>  When you've got nothing left._  
>  —Murder by Death, _Until Morale Improves, the Beatings Will Continue_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click to view content warnings.

Actually finding prey to chase is the hardest part, in Jonathan’s opinion. He doesn’t have the training to know what to look for, and his nose may be slightly keener than a regular person’s when he is on a hunt but still nowhere as keen as Barnabas’ must be. No, he has to rely on his ears and his eyes and, most importantly, luck. Over time his steps grow quieter in the underbrush as he adjusts to moving through it. Last night he hadn’t cared so much because he _wanted_ to be heard, but for this, for tracking, stealth is his greatest ally. Things are more challenging out in the woodlands: all he needs to be unheard on cobblestones or dirt paths are a pair of broken-in leather soles, and even then, he can often get away with making a bit of noise when there are city sounds to swallow it up. In the city, he has other concerns: light, and street lamps, and witnesses.

When Jonathan goes hunting for human prey, he prefers to catch them while they’re travelling. Startle the horses. Fire a pointed warning shot or two. Disable the carriage and isolate his target in the night. Wear the Devil’s face with two glowing eyes in the darkness and chase them through the wilderness for a time. Talk to them; taunt them. Sometimes he favours the gun; other times, a wickedly sharp knife. And other times still, when Jonathan _really_ wants to savour the experience, he will use no weapon at all and savage them with tooth and nail and fist. But he doesn’t do that often. He likes to keep that special.

Within forty-five minutes of wandering and fantasizing, ears keen to the sounds of furred and feathered things moving through the underbrush, Jonathan catches sight of eyeshine in the gloom, and he freezes. His steps are careful, light, attentive to the branches and the fallen leaves. The quarry’s form is revealed to him in stages: the eyeshine again, a tuft of white fur in the moonlight, a thin leg raising, the curve and branch of an antler. A roebuck, Jonathan thinks. Perfect.

As he had done for Barnabas, so too does he do for this creature: takes up his rifle, aims, breathes, and fires. Funnily enough, he does inflict a grazing wound upon the creature, though he had been shooting for a killing blow this time around. The deer bolts, naturally. Jonathan steps up to where the blood has misted across the leaves of the very same bush the deer had been eating, takes a long inhale, and beatifically smiles. He takes his sweet time in loading up his rifle again before he embarks upon the trail.

With Barnabas, the hunt had been exciting, a _challenge—_ or, at least, in theory. The other wolf had snarled for his blood, snapping at the air and scrabbling at the sides of the building while Jonathan, on the cabin’s roof, took shots at the beast whenever he could. That had been an hours-long waiting game, with the wolf dipping in and out of the tree line, pitting Jonathan’s ego and practical sense against one another as it tried to get him to waste his bullets. Luckily he’d brought plenty, and he planted enough of them in the beast to have it flee from its home and find a safe haven to recover in. On the following night he found the beast weak and furious out in the forest, and even freshly shot it still tried its level best to pin and devour him. Jonathan fled, that time, until exhaustion overtook the creature and it could no longer continue the pursuit. Then and only then did Jonathan put an end to the bitter torment that marked the creature’s final hours.

Hunts like this, where the biggest risks to Jonathan’s wellbeing are ricochet or falling, are meditative in a certain sort of way. His focus is entirely upon his quarry, and it is practically a foregone conclusion that he will catch it. So he is brisk but careful in the following, and when the blood and the fright are fading from the air but not nearly enough to throw Jonathan off the trail, he sees that same white tuft of fur.

Again with the rifle, again with the shot. Again with the misting of blood and the cry of not knowing what has happened. Jonathan is upon the deer before it can take a dozen shaky steps and grabs it ’round the middle while it bleeds and gasps from the bubbling hole in the front of its neck. He could use his knife to exsanguinate the creature before it drowns in its own blood, and he knows that this would be the most merciful thing to do. But he has always had difficulty with that particular kind of morality and there is not a soul around to advise him on “the right thing to do” or judge him for his actions.

So, instead, he grabs the deer by the antlers so it will not injure him with its thrashing and seals his mouth over the grisly wound, drawing in great gouts of lifeblood. Slaking his bloodlust and alleviating the frustration he has carried with him since dawn. And, God—the strength of the taste punches all rational thought straight out of him. It is body-hot and it foams in the way a Turkish coffee does and he _thirsts_ like a man dying of it. The struggling stops, the flow subsides, and Jonathan’s too-sharp teeth snap together. He simply spits out the chunk of fur and meat in his mouth and licks into the wound anew.

After that—after a _long time_ of that—Jonathan kneels on the earth and begins to remember himself. Right. He’d come out here with a purpose. He sets the dead deer down, removes his gloves, wipes his bloody mouth with the back of his hand, takes out his knife, and gets to work.

In retrospect, Jonathan sort of wishes that he’d taken up hunting back when he was studying medicine in school: the closest he’d had to getting his hands on a cadaver was in a lecture hall, and had only been allowed a closer visual examination once the dissection was concluded. Though a deer is far from human, the things that give it life are much the same, and the experience of handling still-warm and living organs is a uniquely educational one. Jonathan cuts into the creature’s throat where it was already wounded, reaching behind the damaged trachea to get to the esophagus: pulls, severs, and ties it in a knot. Next he opens up the abdomen, pulling the skin up and away from the organs as he goes—neither of his shots had perforated the entrails, and he would quite like to keep them intact. For the rectum, he does much the same as he did for the esophagus, carving it away from the surrounding tissues and tying it off. From there, it is a simple matter of separating the stomach and the bowels from the rest of the entrails and leaving them in a pile on the forest floor. A wolf _could_ eat this, Jonathan belatedly thinks, but he doesn’t want to cause any more harm to Barnabas’ health than what he had inflicted already. Better to be thorough, and there are still plenty of organ meats left for him to enjoy.

Following the scent of wood-smoke, Jonathan makes his way back to the cottage with his kill slung over his shoulder. The campfire still merrily burns and he is grateful for its illumination as he goes about skinning the roebuck. This, he is less confident about than the disembowelling, but he tries to peel off as much hide as he can—they may not even decide to keep it but he hangs it up on the drying pole when he is done with it anyway. After some consideration, he carves out the backstrap and coils it up to sit in the skillet, covered by the saucepan. It’d be nice to have something other than bread to eat tomorrow.

Jonathan moves the carcass close to the front door, setting it on the dirt path, and calls to Barnabas rather than rapping on the door with bloody knuckles. “Barnabas, I am going to need you to _stay inside_ until I tell you to come out. Understood?” After a moment of waiting to ensure that Barnabas is not about to break down the door, Jonathan goes to wash his face and hands in the river and brings a cup of water back to the campfire.

Walking up to the cottage with his pistol in hand, Jonathan sternly repeats, “Stay where you are.” He moves the logs aside, keeping his hip and one heavy boot on the door as he does so. Then, not taking his eyes off the entrance, he retreats the good twenty paces back towards the campfire. He is tense and he is alert, but Jonathan knows full well that he is likely not the thing the wolf is going to try to sink its teeth into. “All right. You may come out now.”

Despite his certainty that he would not sleep, Barnabas had been dozing, fitful and muzzy; his dreams had been full of an uneasy combination of his complex human thoughts and the wolf’s baser instincts, a muddled mass in which neither body felt right, neither shape coordinated enough for the other’s liking. Still, the smell of blood wakes him a moment before Jonathan’s voice can, and he is suddenly on all four paws, eyes open wide, and for a brief and terrifying moment Barnabas cannot see anything but a haze of silver and grey and blurry, ragged angles, the wolf’s comprehension of the cottage after their shared dreaming. He is barely half a step from the door by the time he manages to get himself back in hand. It’s the hunger: it drives like a spike in his belly, possesses the wolf with a writhing silent shriek of _need_ that Barnabas is only just able to seize and wrestle to stillness. Even so, his body trembles in every inch with the wolf’s hunger and Barnabas’ fear at how finely-cut a thing it had been, inches from disaster. He pants, his still-stained tongue lolling from his mouth, and a line of saliva trails to the floor of the cabin, staining the wood dark as he strains every muscle to behave. He hears and comprehends Jonathan as if he’s far away, like a man talking underwater, and he clings to the words like a man drowning. It is _important,_ he reminds himself fiercely, more important than the ache of his empty belly, to listen, to comprehend, to _obey._

He cannot force his body to step away from the door, even so, and when Jonathan has given the all-clear it is all he can do to emerge with care, shouldering his weight against it and pushing it open.

Barnabas walks with a stiff and careful gait, favouring his injured leg, but his gaze finds Jonathan—mercifully and wisely out of easy reach—and he holds this image like a lodestone, keeps the sight of the familiar figure in the moonlight in his mind like a prayer. His head is down, his nose snuffling for the deer he doesn’t need to see to know is there, and when he finds it, he crouches to investigate. Hot iron and firm muscle and the mineral scent of organs fill his nose, and he pushes his muzzle into the hollow of the carcass to get at these soft, shadowy shapes first. He starts eating carefully, filling the quiet with the moist sounds of lapping and chewing, the wet _rip_ of organ meat, and as he proceeds the pace picks up until he is gobbling, gorging on whatever he can fit in his enormous mouth. He crouches when he has finished with the offal to start in on a haunch, and still unwavering, those strangely human bright eyes over the dark and blood-wet muzzle are fixated on Jonathan. He wants to thank him, perhaps to weep with relief, but all he can do is stare and ponder his gratitude as the thick brush of his tail wags slowly behind him. He doesn’t want Jonathan to be afraid of him, but he knows that is a tall order when he is like this.

Jonathan stands there ready to raise his voice or his pistol at the first sign of an aggressive approach. The wolf stares and he stares right back at it. For a good few minutes, Jonathan does nothing except to watch the wolf eat its meal, keen to any change in expression, in body language—but no, it seems as peaceful as any creature allowed to have a meal free from scavengers. In time, he feels confident enough to leave Barnabas be, and walks with slow and measured steps back over to the campfire. No sudden movements—he is not something to chase.

Sitting down to rest his legs with his pistol on his knee, Jonathan continues to monitor the scene. It’s comical, really, to see a beast that large nose-deep in a deer that small. By rights, he ought to be eating something like a cow or horse. Jonathan remembers that he said he likes rabbit—Barnabas must be able to get one down in two bites if he wanted to.

Silhouetted against the building by firelight, Jonathan can see the swish of Barnabas’ tail in the shifting shadows there. Jonathan doesn’t know enough about wolves to know whether or not this is natural behaviour, and he entertains himself with the idea that this is an affectation that Barnabas has picked up from what he’s seen from dogs—he certainly has acted very dog-like this evening. Jonathan has never gone hunting with hounds before, but this is what he imagines they must do with their kills if there is no hunter around to shoo them away.

After he’s picked off his favourite bits, Barnabas gives an almighty snuffle, sneezes, and then flops down mostly on top of the carcass, thoroughly bloodying the thick shag of his fur as he contentedly sets to gnawing on one of the deer’s delicate, petite femurs, steadying it on end between both great forepaws as he maneuvers it about in his mouth. He revels in the feeling of his stomach not being empty anymore, in the copper-salt-sweetness of blood on his tongue, in the mineral-bitter savour at the back of his throat, and the blissful ache in the strong muscles of his jaws as he works them around the still-meaty bone. The wolf is almost as pleased as he is, basking in the cool quiet of the autumn night, in not being confined, and eventually, in the delightful shattering snap of the bone in his jaws as the rich, fatty, almost buttery flavour of marrow floods his mouth, blunting everything else in comparison for a while.

Eventually, nothing remains of the carcass but a small part of the spine and a couple of half-gnawed ribs. Even the skull has been cracked open and largely consumed including its contents, and Barnabas, streaked in gore, sits among the scraps with a considering look on his face as he licks his chops, the very picture of wolfish delight.

He peers back up at Jonathan after a few moments, and he ventures a sniff or two. He can still smell meat, and his tongue quests out, licks gore from his nose as he squints. Somewhere, there is more of the deer: his nose says so and he has learned to trust it if nothing else. He rises to his feet, shakes out his fur, and cautiously trots a little closer, his head cocked to one side and his wounded leg stiffly hobbling. He stays out of the circle of firelight at first, though, as if verifying that his nose knows what it’s about. He can smell blood over Jonathan’s scent, lots of it, and he finds the combination more alluring than it has any right to be; it makes him bolder as he ventures cautiously into the red-gold glow. His head is up, his wet dark nose working, his tail relaxed: the wolf’s body language is all keen interest, but Barnabas’ disposition at the helm softens the edge of boldness and aggression there. He cannot resist the good smells here, blood and Jonathan and _meat,_ and he makes a small, piteous whine as if to explain himself.

The longer Barnabas gorges himself, the more comfortable Jonathan grows in his company. Over time the experience of watching the massive wolf eat becomes agreeable and he stops thinking about his pistol so much—that is, until it rises and approaches. Jonathan reminds himself that its demeanour is simply inquisitive, that’s all, and so he leaves the pistol where it is. It wouldn’t do to push things in a confrontational direction.

When he hears Barnabas audibly sniffing, Jonathan begins to understand why he has come over here. He toes the skillet towards himself and rests his foot on the bottom of the saucepan, keeping the last of the venison covered and confined. _“No,_ Barnabas. That’s for tomorrow,” he insists, though that little whimper _is_ convincing. Seeing the wolf this close, he realizes that it has the exact same eye colour as Barnabas does, and he is reminded again that this beast is also his friend and to deny him indulgences would be cruel after he’s had such a hard time of it. So, with a sigh, Jonathan opens up his pack and takes a weighty chunk of salt pork into his gloved fist, making sure that the drawstring is closed immediately afterwards. “No biting,” he reminds Barnabas, and offers it out to him, palm-up.

Barnabas’ bright eyes watch Jonathan’s hands work the fastening of his pack, not missing the firm plant of a booted foot on the pot bottom. He eyes it ruefully, but without thumbs there isn’t much he could do to get it out of there. The wolf has ideas about how to dislodge that foot, but Barnabas puts those firmly out of his mind. He wants to be trustworthy, he reminds it, though it understands this only rudimentarily. Had it been a true wolf, he could have given it ‘pack’ or ‘family’, but those concepts are alien to the moon-mad creature that he finds himself sharing a mind and body with, and he pauses, sits an arm’s length away from touching Jonathan, the firelight casting ruddy copper shadows and lights into his dark fur, throwing the sleek lines of the great head into sharp relief. He watches, solemn, those too-human eyes strangely lucid and intelligent.

He is still, sitting for a long moment. There is something terrifying about taking food from that dark-gloved hand, though the offered bit of pork smells delicious and makes him lick his lips again. It feels intimate, even to Barnabas, who would have made himself a bigger fool for lesser prizes. The wolf, for its part, has reason to fear the fine figure of the hunter, even though sitting at the fire he can meet Jonathan’s eyes on equal footing. It is after a few moments of this back-and-forth worrying at the idea that Barnabas finally comes to an accord within himself. No biting, they both agree: he moves forward again at a slinking pace, and stretches his neck out to take the chunk of meat from Jonathan’s open palm almost delicately. He does not step back, only chews on the salty, savoury stuff with a low, bass-register grumble of contentment as the set of his ears relaxes, his focus wavering as he enjoys the treat.

As Barnabas chews, Jonathan keeps his hand exactly where it is, knowing that the wolf has more to fear—and more _right_ to fear—from him than he does from it. It has not tried to harm him, not once, and he questions why he still has the gun in his lap. “I’m not going to hurt you: I’m just putting the gun away,” he says in the same tone of voice he uses to soothe children undergoing difficult examinations at his practice. Jonathan holsters the pistol slowly, sparing it a glance to make sure it isn’t cocked, and extends his glove again, should Barnabas wish to investigate it. In time, when the wolf has had enough of the snack, it does: first with its nose, and then with its exploratory tongue. Trying to eat the rest of the salt, Jonathan thinks, as he patiently allows it to interact with him according to its wishes.

When Jonathan believes the creature satisfied with this, he slowly—again, no sudden movements—raises his hand to rest it upon the top of its head. A couple of tentative pets, smoothing the fur back away from its forehead, ready to stop at the very first sign of discomfort.

The delicious, pungent saltiness of the pork distracts Barnabas from the gun other than to dismissively catalogue its scent—metal, burnt black powder, gun oil—and he stands just inside the range of Jonathan’s reach the entire time, watchful and quiet. He is jumpy at first, twitchy, fidgety; the wolf is not familiar with this kind of interaction, and it wants to shy away, to slink back to relative safety and investigate from a distance. Even so, he cannot deny the appeal of exploring that hand when offered, that the feel of smooth leather under his tongue, skin-warm from the fingers and palm beneath the thin layer, is somewhat intoxicating. His nose is alive with scent and interest—blood and beeswax and salt mingle with the subtler human scent of Jonathan beneath, a hundred thousand tiny, distinct pieces of information about his friend that Barnabas doesn’t have the sense or time to process. His tail wags more quickly, alive with interest, as he presses his nose firmly into Jonathan’s palm.

Barnabas is surprised to learn that the wolf’s fear, too, is softening into fascination—given that, he should be less surprised that his conscious thoughts are straying from wholesome. Leather and blood and the faint lingering scent of moon-drenched foliage and young deer suits Jonathan better than expensive cologne ever could, he thinks, and it is with this slightly flustered thought that he feels a hand rest atop his head. He’s still for a moment, and then he takes a cautious step forward, then another, bringing himself fully into Jonathan’s reach. For a moment he only stands there, squinting under the petting, and when he does not receive a rebuke, he sets briskly about sniffing. Now that the gun has been put away, the wolf feels significantly freer about taking liberties, and he investigates Jonathan in further detail, nosily snuffling up one sleeve, then the other, heedless of such niceties as personal space. He is a crowding, immense shape of shaggy dark fur with a wet intrusive nose, and in his pursuit of further pets and further interesting things to sniff, Barnabas and the wolf are of one mind. It is dangerously and sweetly tempting to lose his grasp and trust the wolf when its impulses are so similar to his own.

Initially, Jonathan is disquieted to have the wolf’s head and teeth this close to his flesh, and when it noses up and down his arms, he remembers what he saw of Barnabas’ defensive wounds; the bite that caused him to be like this. One snap of its jaws in self-defence or in affection could undo all of the precautions he’s taken to keep himself safe. So as Barnabas explores he makes himself a statue, unmoving, with his heart rattling his ribs.

But, in time, he acclimates, arming himself with the knowledge that this is still Barnabas, who told him he would never forgive himself for spreading his curse to Jonathan; who would rather take another bullet than do so. Jonathan resumes the petting, gentle at first, then firmer when he gets a better idea of how thick the wolf’s fur actually is. Down its long back with grounding, heavy strokes; fingers buried in the ruff of its neck, scratching as much as he can with gloves on; under its viscera-stained chin, not caring about the added mess because his clothes are enough of one already from the dirt and sweat and gore of the hunt. Jonathan assesses what the wolf seems to like and catalogues that knowledge away for if not tomorrow night, then for next month.

Because there is going to be a ‘next month’, is there not? It’s not safe for Barnabas to be left to his own devices out here in the woods without a keeper, because he would just go back to old habits of causing property damage and attracting attention. He needs someone to keep him confined or leashed until he learns self-discipline—if he even _can_ learn how to do that in the body of a savage, untamed thing. The wolf needs a firm hand—someone willing to be a reminder of the consequences of losing control, because losing control means more displeased farmers, and more displeased farmers mean rumours, and in turn, more hunters like him. Jonathan will not see that happen.

And, well. He knows a thing or two about how to encourage proper behaviour. Both in his practice and recreationally.

At some point, Jonathan removes his gloves altogether and marvels at the coarse warmth of the fur under his hands. The texture helps him think, drowning out distractions, and Jonathan loses himself to his plans and to Barnabas’ company as the light of the moon is slowly overtaken by the distant brilliance of the sun.

The wolf is more than glad, once he comprehends the marvel of petting hands and scratching fingers, to simply lean into Jonathan. Barnabas’ great head rests by turns on one of Jonathan’s knees, or across his shoulder, or wherever he can shift to get those wondrous hands in his fur. After a while of this he sinks down, planting his heavy, furry bottom carefully into a seat mostly-between Jonathan’s boots but partly overlapping them, where he can be stroked and petted at will. For all the world he gives the appearance of the most enormous lapdog, his eyes half-closed and his nose toward the sky in an expression of sublime joy, thoughtless, senseless in his utter contentment. His belly is largely full and his senses are saturated with good smells—Barnabas, after long-abstracted consideration of the subject, has decided that this is by far the pleasantest way he has spent a night as a wolf.

He soaks up the feel of it, the novelty of attention without demands, of affection without ultimatums. This is a sensation that Barnabas has never in his adult life consciously been aware of having, and he finds that even behind the thick layers of the wolf’s confusion he does not know what he ought to feel or do or think. So many of Barnabas’ relationships are deeply transactional in nature—goods for service, worship for a distant, tolerant fondness—and although he would never think to admit it, it feels deeply freeing to simply sit, wordless and content in the cool silence as the light of the world edges first into a deep and velvety black, and then from black to cold, starless grey, and then finally, slow and golden as honey, the dawn.

Barnabas is so comfortable where he sits that he does not have the presence of mind to pull away as the change slides over him. He is relaxed, his breaths are deep and slow, and even as his body is reconfigured, he does not pull away. The sounds and sensations of his body resolving into solid sure humanity are strange and macabre; the slide and twist of bone and muscle changing are almost audible, but other than a little gasp as ribs close in tighter around lungs that take a moment longer than they ought to shrink from the wolf’s deep barrel of a chest, he does not utter a word or cry. Barnabas’ senses fully come back to him shortly after this, but he is still sitting between Jonathan’s feet on earth deeply warmed by his own furry body, his side pressed flush against the length of Jonathan’s calf, and he turns his head to look the scant distance up to Jonathan’s face. There’s no anxiety there, no self-consciousness, only the brief and daydreaming look of a man who has been on a long journey and does not know if he will ever see home again—a man who does not know if he wants to, or if it ever existed in the first place.

He smiles then, a wistful tip-tilted little curve of lips, and says, voice soft and crestfallen, “I wish that wasn’t over.”

In witnessing his first transformation of wolf to human, Jonathan expected there to be much more violence in it: the animal going down fierce and fighting as human intelligence subsumed it. He calmly watches Barnabas’ body contort and the fur retreat back into his skin but for the hair on the top of his head and the stubble on his face. The man really is going to need a good shave after this is all over. A good shave and a very long bath. Like last night, the filth of the evening has stayed on him, and caked-on red and brown smears cover him from cheeks to chest, coat his hands, and colour his lips.

Jonathan shamefully realizes that he thinks Barnabas wears it beautifully. He is nude and at his feet and looking up at him with such bliss and devotion—surely he is interpreting that wrong, he must be—that it sends a jolt of _something_ through Jonathan too pleasant for him to be willing to name, because Barnabas on the ground before him is its own perverse kind of perfect.

Without conscious awareness of it, Jonathan returns to scratching Barnabas’ hair just as he’s been doing on and off for the past hours. He stares past Barnabas’ shoulder into the dying fire and wrestles himself back under control, reminding himself that he is his physician first while he is staying here and that Barnabas is not really in much of a position to defend himself or leave the cottage if Jonathan happened to make any unwanted advances. He wouldn’t want to risk that—not when his relationship with the gentleman is so fraught and complicated out here in the woods.

For those reasons, Jonathan makes himself stop. Petting an animal is one thing, but for people, the connotations are different and he doesn’t want Barnabas to start getting the wrong idea. “You’re a _mess.”_ Jonathan chuckles, not needing to gesture because it really is kind of everywhere. “Did you honestly have to _lay down_ in it?”

For a blissful few moments, when Jonathan’s hand finds his hair again, Barnabas wants to weep, almost. It’s an undefinable sweetness, a knife-edged balance between the scent of blood on Jonathan’s breath and the tender working of hands in his fur, in the tumble of his hair. It makes the moment sweeter when that calm and unfocused look on Jonathan’s face seems to Barnabas to echo the strangeness of his own feeling—and then, as ever, it makes the moment more bitter when the shutters come back down, when the tenuous thread of connection between them breaks. He doesn’t dare to ascribe his own emotions to Jonathan, and knows better than to assume. He _knows better,_ and yet Barnabas’ mood is quiet and strange even after the wolf has curled up to sleep in whatever unspeakable hollow it occupies in his chest when it doesn’t have four paws in the earth, and he _wishes._

Everything is complicated. There are a thousand moving parts to things when Barnabas has the chance to open his fool mouth; there are a _million_ ways he could ruin this. But if he doesn’t give it a name, if he doesn’t call it under the light for questioning, he at least gets to savour the brief, acute stab of sweetness when it comes, without risk—if also without reward. Barnabas thinks he must be a coward, after all.

He looks down at himself when Jonathan speaks, and his eyes open wide in a comic look of dismay. “Oh God,” he says, aghast, “I did do that, didn’t I? I look like the worst sort of monster!” He says this with a plaintive grumpiness, a little queasy at the memory. He is pointedly not looking at the remnants of the deer. “Please tell me this is all deer blood and I didn’t do anything monumentally stupid when I wasn’t paying attention?”

Jonathan, his amusement intensified by Barnabas’ theatrical distress in the face of something harmless, is nevertheless quick to reassure him. “No, no, this is all the deer.” With some awkwardness given Barnabas is occupying a position between his legs, Jonathan scoots back on his seat and swings his legs around to allow himself up into a standing position. His lower back has gone sore in his hours of leaning forward to pet Barnabas, and so he takes a moment to stretch it.

“It’s perfectly fine. It’s not as though you can use a fork and knife with a set of paws.” Jonathan says, offering a hand and helping Barnabas up to take his spot on the stump. Certainly much more suitable a seat for a person than the bare earth is. “Is there soap somewhere indoors? We may as well get you properly washed while you’re still outside.”

Gratefully accepting the help, Barnabas levers himself up off the ground and sits carefully on the stump, surprised to note the referred warmth of its prior occupant remains in the rough-cut grain of the wood. He is surprised also by the lack of soreness in his bent knees and hips. He knows in theory more than in truth that he spent quite a long while being still and awkwardly leaning into Jonathan, and if it weren’t for the feel of that warm wood beneath his bare bottom, he would not believe it. There is no awkwardness of joint or limb—he feels instead satisfied, comfortable, as if he hadn’t spent the night as a wolf at all. It sweetens his disposition significantly, makes him feel light-headed and airy with relief.

“That’s a funny thought,” he says after a moment, picturing the wolf’s enormous paws wrapped, claw and pad, around an eating knife and fork, and then adding in his mind’s eye a napkin tucked in at the thick and shaggy ruff under his chin. An irrepressible little laugh bubbles up in his chest, and he wrestles with it until a faint gleam of amused tears glitter in his bright eyes—the image is so ridiculous that it chases away the last of his strange and wistful mood, brightening his handsome, mobile features into something that approximates the usual absentminded, easy smile. It is a look he has not worn in many months.

“A bath sounds like heaven,” Barnabas says agreeably, raising one grubby hand to scratch gingerly at the scruffy, two-day growth of dark beard on cheeks and chin. He is not surprised to find it unpleasantly itchy: he has always kept himself tidily clean-shaven, finding the bristly hairs uncomfortable. They are even more so now, with his face crusted in rusty, thick flakes of blood and other unidentifiable fluids. Still, after a moment he realizes what exactly he’s scratching, and his nose wrinkles. “Perhaps next time I could be prevailed upon not to shove my whole face into my food,” he grumbles without any real heat in the complaint. All that matters, messy face or not, is that he didn’t hurt anyone. He can remember most of the night this time, with no strange silver haze overlaying his memories, and finds his nightly activities to have been entirely benign. 

“There’s soap in the kitchen,” he says presently, “although it’s not a _nice_ soap. I don’t think I care much about its quality, though, if I can get clean!” He is studiously ignoring the cold autumn air, which has become much more troubling in the absence of the wolf’s thick, warm insulating fur, and his skin is prickled all over with gooseflesh. He crosses his arms self-consciously over his chest to hold in the warmth.

“When your injuries heal, you’ll have the river to rinse off in,” Jonathan says, draping his blood-marked coat over the drying pole next to the deerskin. He slings his pack around his shoulder and gathers up some of the cookware to take back into the house with him. “I suppose in the meantime I’ll have to hand-feed you the next deer if you’re to have any hope of keeping clean. I’ll be right back.”

In his passage in and out of the house, Jonathan takes in the state of the broken lock and surmises that uneventful nights spent as a wolf must be a very rare thing indeed for Barnabas—perhaps last night was even the first. He thinks about how nice it is to have more of Barnabas’ cheery self back. Over the past months he has noted some of the change in Barnabas’ general mood, but he hadn’t pressed the issue, since his colleague’s problems were his own business. If Barnabas wanted recommendations on how to better improve his health, then Jonathan had them aplenty—all he needed to do was ask. Now, knowing the reason behind Barnabas’ emotional disturbance, Jonathan is not surprised that he did not consult him for assistance. Lycanthropy was not a thing that could be cured by a healthy diet or mineral baths.

If there is a cure out there for this, Jonathan thinks as he searches the kitchen for soap, then there is likely not a person in Edinburgh more likely to know of it than Jonah Magnus. Were he in Barnabas’ place afflicted by the same curse, he would have scoured every record he could find in search of a means to reverse it, and it wouldn’t surprise him if Barnabas had already consulted Jonah about this matter, asking after it as a hypothetical. Regardless, that could be something to inquire about when they speak to him in person, and in the meantime, Jonathan is going to work under the assumption that this is an incurable and chronic condition and do what he can to improve Barnabas’ quality of life and monitor his symptoms.

Jonathan does find the jar of soft soap, opening it up to give it an investigative sniff: tallow not quite masked by oil of rosemary. He brings it out to Barnabas along with a washcloth and a towel, and a couple of minutes later, comes by with a mug to pour with and a fresh pot of water. He still doesn’t trust the remnants of lunar caustic in the basin to not irritate Barnabas’ potentially silver-sensitive skin.

In the time it takes for Barnabas to lather himself up, Jonathan takes the trips necessary to clean up the rest of the campsite and move more firewood inside. Then, with rolled-up sleeves, he takes the soapy washcloth in hand and attends to the areas that Barnabas cannot easily reach: his back, his injured leg, his feet. Jonathan apologizes for the chill of the river-water before beginning to pour mugfuls of it over him, rinsing him off. “You’re going to be glad that the bed is right next to the hearth,” Jonathan assures him. “All those furs and blankets. And when we get up in the evening I can cook the venison I saved. You still have your pastry, too.”

True to his word, Barnabas is simply glad to be getting clean, and though he has access to better soap at home he does not turn his nose up at the simple soft soap, whether it has a faint pong of tallow or not. He scrubs up with more resignation than revulsion, though the water in the pot rapidly goes from cold and clean to muddied with blood and other assorted filth, and he cedes the cloth to Jonathan’s more diligent hand. After a certain point of being cold, he would have expected to become a bit used to it, but he cannot help the brisk little yelps and gasps as water is sluiced over his lathered skin to rinse away the mess. It’s a relief to be clean, and he uses his hands to swipe the water and soap from his skin industriously as Jonathan pours.

“I think you’re right,” Barnabas says around chattering teeth, laughing. “Honestly, if I could have my bed right in front of the hearth all the time, I think I would!” He shakes his head, trying to shed a little more water, and then freezes mid-stroke. “Wait, you didn’t eat the pastry?” He looks a little mystified, tips his head to look up at Jonathan with puzzlement. “I told you you could if you wanted it. Do—” he hesitates, then asks with some concern as if the answer is terribly important, “do you not like pastry?” Only just then he realizes with an odd jolt, that of all the things he knows about Jonathan, the hundreds of odd things and habits and attitudes he has picked up from him over the course of their acquaintance, he doesn’t know whether the man cares for sweets or not. He doesn’t know why the thought of this bothers him so, only that it does, and that he wishes with a sudden acute longing to know more.

With Barnabas shivering under his hands, Jonathan is brisk about helping to wipe him down. There is something of the hunter petting the wolf in the firmness of his touch: it is both what he has grown accustomed to and the thing that will most keep Barnabas warm during an unpleasant process. Jonathan refills the mug again, holds Barnabas’ arm outstretched, and pours down the length of it to rinse it off.

That Barnabas would be so earnest about asking after his culinary preferences is nothing short of endearing, so he’s happy to give him an answer. “I know, but it’s _yours._ I like them, sure enough, but you brought it. I’m not about to take an injured man’s dessert away from him. There’s cruel, and then there’s _heartless.”_

The other arm, the thighs, the lower legs. As Jonathan crouches to rinse off his feet, he sees the now-wet dirt from the tree stump clinging to Barnabas’ skin where it’s been kicked up, and he realizes that the seat of his trousers is probably a bit of a mess. He feels uncomfortable in wearing clothing this much in disarray: both because of the physical irritation it causes, and because it does not represent the image he tries to project of a professional gentleman. He has never understood the attitude of fellow surgeons in wearing blood and other fluids on their clothing as if it were a mark of pride: he’s seen aprons so stained one could swear that the fabric used to make them came already patterned and overcoats so saturated with the stuff that the crinkling when they move is _audible._ It irritates him to see professional men not taking advantage of the laundry services easily accessible to them in the city—on the battlefield, where he had started, Jonathan had precious little of that. Sometimes it feels as though he cannot truly relax until he’s made it home, stripped out of his work clothes, and bathed. Out here he only has the one set of clothing, and not bathing for the past couple of days makes them cling and itch in places. That’s twice now he’s spent a night stalking through the woods, saturating them with sweat and mud, growing ever filthier. Once he is done with Barnabas, he’s going to have to brave the river: better to do it at the crack of dawn when there wouldn’t be any people about, even if he hasn’t seen hide nor hair of anyone else in this part of the forest.

When he is satisfied that he has done what he can for Barnabas’ general state of cleanliness, Jonathan suggests to him, “If you stand, then I can wash your backside. Here, hold onto this for support.” One hand taps on the supports on the drying pole, indicating it; the other is offered to Barnabas to help him up to standing.

The satisfaction of having the answer to his question, in addition to those sure, firm hands slicking water from his skin, smooths and lays the bristling prickles of gooseflesh and slows his heartbeat, settles him. Barnabas finds the sensation to be an odd combination of comforting and rousing, though he knows it is not meant to be either. Still, fortunately it is easy for his body not to display his heart’s foolishness while he is naked, wet, and shivering in the middle of the woods. He simply complies without thinking or asking questions, allowing himself to be moved and manipulated in whatever way is necessary while his bones rattle with shivers. It’s easier this way.

“If it helps,” Barnabas says blithely as his gaze follows Jonathan down, “I have never thought you cruel _or_ heartless. Blunt, perhaps. Certainly honest! To a fault, even!” He is teasing, his tone warm and lighthearted. “Though I’m sure you’re well tired of tending me and have the grace not to say as much. I’m grateful, anyway.” He accepts the offered hand and reaches up to take hold of the pole as well, grasping it, and between the two of them, he manages to lever himself up onto his feet without the use of his wounded leg.

“That was hyperbole, Barnabas. Apologies for my tone.” It comes with the territory of having a reputation as a candid speaker, Jonathan supposes: whenever he speaks otherwise, misinterpretation is not uncommon. He ensures Barnabas is not about to collapse under his own weight, works more soap into a lather between his hands, and makes the choice not to dwell on his own social shortcomings. “Oh, hush. You’re hardly the first patient I’ve bathed before, and I much prefer your company.”

“And I yours,” Barnabas agrees easily, laughing a little as he tips his head. “I can’t say I’d trust another doctor with my… _condition,_ after all.” Despite his current state, Barnabas has never been a delicate man. He has always considered himself an athlete after a fashion, and has never resorted to corsetry to cut a fine enough figure to satisfy himself, though he’d not have thought it a shame to do so—but he does enjoy his indulgences and has, now and then, run slightly to softness. Despite the recent liberal application of the great panacea that is sweets, however, it is more clear now as he stands with the weight of him largely on one leg that he has slimmed down further than he’s accustomed to in the year since he’d been bitten. There is a certain spareness to the long frame of him, the sturdy shapes more hollow than usual, like a man recovering slowly from a long fever. He stands still and unwavering in the thin, watery dawnlight nevertheless, looking down at himself. It had been easy enough to ignore—Barnabas only rarely thinks much of seeing himself nude—but there are now faint shadows between his ribs and in the long curve of waist between rib and hip.

There is still some pain to it as he stands still with water running down his body to rinse away the remainder of dust and mud from his flesh. He cannot resist testing the wounded leg, and shifts his weight slightly, finding much to his surprise that the sharp and consuming sear has turned to a dull, hard misery, knotted dry and tight, in the back of his thigh. He feels as if he can breathe around this, perhaps even hope for healing that doesn’t leave him hobbled.

“Perhaps,” Barnabas says before he thinks, “I will have occasion to tend you with the same patient care you have shown me!” It doesn’t take more than a moment once the words have left his lips for him to realize what he might be implying here—and it takes only a moment after that for his mind, unbidden, to provide the image of kneeling at Jonathan’s feet with a warm and soapy cloth, stroking it across his skin and watching the bubbles swirl across it. He nearly chokes in his haste to clarify, “Hopefully in, ah, in not such a state as this, er, damn my tongue, it may have run away with me here, I’m sorry.”

Jonathan, to his credit, attempts to wash Barnabas with as much professionalism as he can muster. From lower back to knee, Jonathan’s hands skate across his good friend’s skin, loosening up every bit of blood and grime that still clings to it. In the half-dark and the quiet, with only the disinterested birds for company, there is a remove from the rest of society, doubly judgemental as it is of the pleasure of fleshly sensuality for people unmarried and the more-than-fraternal show of intimacy between two bachelors. Jonathan tries not to think about the implications of touching a gentleman’s arse slick-fingered when they have privacy aplenty.

He knows he shouldn’t think these sorts of thoughts, but then Barnabas, with his suggestions and his bashfulness, calls to the wet and wicked thing living in his core again. For once in his life, he is thankful for the divine error that put him into this body: if he had his preferred anatomy, then surely he would be wishing for a swift death to put an end to his mortification.

There is no response to give those words which would not intensify the mutual embarrassment to an intolerable degree, and so, Jonathan makes no verbal acknowledgement of what he heard. Instead, with a warning murmur, he announces that “this is going to sting, I’m sorry,” before he pats the inside of the wound with soapy fingertips with as much delicacy as he can manage. God knows the situation calls for it.

All that Barnabas can do is hold onto the pole and bear the embarrassment until it has receded to a tolerable level; until his cheeks no longer feel as if every drop of blood he possesses are drawn into them. Still, he does not think he will ever be able to feel those wet sliding hands on his skin without thinking of things he knows he shouldn’t. Barnabas is on the edge of making a breathless joke to forestall the inevitability of his sudden and unbidden desire—he wants Jonathan’s hands on him, wants with an immediate, powerful longing to feel Jonathan’s breath fast and light against his back, clever dark fingers clasping his hips bruising-tight, to be surrounded by the scent of him thick in the air, warm and safe and fired with passion—when he feels soapy fingers curl into the slick and ragged perimeters of the hole in his thigh. He feels water and soap run and squelch wetly around the intruders, and for a moment the impulses cross briefly in his head, sex and pain, into an electric surge of sensation he wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to untangle even on his best days before separating again. 

The harsh soap burns in the wound despite the gentleness of Jonathan’s touch, and it’s only pain now, uncomplicated, like a single note. The air leaves him on a sound that would have felt more at home coming out of the wolf’s chest, a breathless wounded grunt that feels wrenched up out of his gut. The long muscles of his leg jump uncontrollably, spasming helplessly, but he doesn’t move away, bearing the intensity of feeling and then coming out the other side of it hazy. Barnabas is grateful for the sudden pain, if nothing else, to put a period at the end of a most dangerous line of thought.

His laugh is unlovely and uneven, and he is grateful for the cold rinsing water when it comes to sweep the soap from skin and flesh. “You know, I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever get used to that,” Barnabas says with a forced flippancy and brightness in his tone, aware his mouth is working and, frustratingly, aware his mind doesn’t have a grip on the reins here. “More people ought to try getting shot by their dearest friends, I think it must build a man’s character...” This is as far as he gets before the ordeal is done and Jonathan is guiding him back inside. Barnabas keeps his feet long enough to get inside, and feels it a triumph that he does not make a sound as they walk, though he leans with ungraceful heaviness on Jonathan’s shoulder until he’s put to bed.

The fire is only coals now, and his vision blurs them with a brief, fierce swim of tears that he blinks away quickly and does not understand. “Thank you, my good man, this will be much more luxurious,” he says dryly, looking up at Jonathan from the mattress with his hands propping him up, elbows bent.

Jonathan buries him in furs and blankets and rekindles the fire to ensure that he will not perish of the chill. He goes to fetch a pot of drinking water and rinses off the mug in the doing, setting both down close in Barnabas’ reach. “I think I’m going to go bathe myself. We can bandage you up again when I get back,” Jonathan tells him, because he is sure that Barnabas would prefer to do that when he is warm and cozy and dry.

Before he bathes, however, Jonathan decides to handle the cleaning of the cookware, now that he has soap available to him. In transferring over the venison to a plate and covering it with an inverted pot to keep the flies at bay, he notes that there is more of it there than he originally thought: between that and the remaining bread, that’s a hearty dinner for the both of them, and probably some left over for the wolf as well. While he’s doing the washing-up, Jonathan entertains himself with thoughts of the beast eating scraps and licking at the bottom of the skillet to get at every last morsel of fat and flavour. Next month, perhaps, Jonathan will make sure they bring bread and vegetables so that they can make a stock from the bones of whatever they hunt and have a good soup for their human meals. Jonathan has never considered himself to be an excellent cook, but given his sex and family’s class, he has spent enough time in the kitchen to feel competent about what he’s doing. He wonders if Barnabas has ever had to properly cook a day in his life. He doubts it.

Jonathan comes and goes through the door of the cabin, dropping off clean dishes and his outerwear, ensuring that the door is properly closed every time to keep the warmth indoors. And then, at last, he strips down by the riverbank and sits with his back to the cabin. It’s nerve-wracking for him to be nude in a space that isn’t behind the safety of a locked door—he cannot at all remember the last time. Years? Perhaps even decades? His inner self is so at odds with his natural form that he cannot bear the thought of being seen by a stranger as _this,_ soft and vulnerable under all the layers of clothing which compose his daily armour. And so he keeps his pistol close and his thoughts again turn to mythology as a distraction: to Artemis of the wilds, and to Actaeon, the hunter who caught her bathing, and her holy wrath that forced him into a stag’s shape and the massacre at the teeth of his hunting-dogs that followed. As an adolescent, when Jonathan had first picked up a book of Greek myths, he found the idea of a virgin goddess powerful and fearsome as any of her brothers to be an empowering figure indeed. He has always held a certain measure of fondness for her, but Jonathan has come to appreciate Artemis more and more after discovering the ecstasy of the hunt for himself.

Much like he had done with Barnabas, Jonathan is brisk and thorough in his bathing. He dreads the chill of the river water, though he knows that it’s a necessary evil, and he delays it as long as possible, taking care to wash his thick, dark hair for the first time in a while. The face is last, since that necessitates removing his spectacles, and he doesn’t like to go without clear vision for very long. When he lowers himself into the river, he does so with a grimace, for it is no less cold than he anticipated and he feels it most in his toes and in his fingertips, where the blood sits close to the surface. Submerging his chest is a particular torture, for he likes to acknowledge its presence only when necessary and ignoring the rushing current breaking over his goose-pimpled skin is simply impossible. Jonathan runs his hands through his wet hair with something approaching desperation, eager to be clean and back indoors as soon as he can manage. With chattering teeth, he steps out of the river, dries himself off, and begins the laborious process of dressing once more, making the executive decision to wear his shirt inside-out in the hopes that the accumulated oils and perspiration will bother him less if they are further away from his bare skin.

Back inside, Jonathan cannot get his things put down and his boots removed fast enough, and soon he is clambering into bed and borrowing some of Barnabas’ blankets to bring some life back into his bones. It is blessedly warm next to the fire, and he lays as close to it as he can, curled up and trembling. The next time he has to take a bath here, he vows, he’s going to do it with the basin and hot water.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artwork done by the legendary [dundee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dundee998/pseuds/dundee998)!
> 
>  **Content warnings:**  
>  Gender dysphoria, gore, gun violence, hunting and butchery of animals. Mentions of murder. [return to top]


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Click to view content warnings.

By the time Jonathan returns, the shivers have finally stopped for Barnabas, the warmth having come back into the core of him, and even his teeth are no longer chattering; his body is blessedly, sweetly cozy and he is clean and his head is full of warm thoughts, his nose full of the scents tangled in the blankets and furs. He is lying curled in the pile, his thoughts untroubled and his eyes fixed, hazy and dreamy, on the dancing, flickering heart of the flames when he hears the door close behind Jonathan, the sound of his boots on the wooden floor. Barnabas doesn’t have time to lift his head before he feels Jonathan rushing into the bed, pushing, shifting the blankets and mattress. He imagines he can almost hear Jonathan’s bones rattling with the cold, too.

In the draft from the door he can feel the bite of the morning air as if Jonathan has brought it in with him, and he cooperates hastily to open the velvety pocket of warmth he has managed to carve out between himself and the pile and the mattress. It is less scant than he expected, he thinks, and he swears he can feel the chill radiating off Jonathan without even touching him. In the firelight, he watches the beads of river water gleaming in Jonathan’s wet hair, the prickle of goosebumps on his dark skin above the inside-out seams of his shirt, and his heart aches with sympathy. He lets out a little breath. It would hardly be the thing to let Jonathan suffer when he has been so kind to Barnabas—he can still feel the ghost of gentle hands on his skin, in his hair—and he swallows softly, screwing up his courage as tight as he can. He may not have much to offer Jonathan right now, or perhaps ever, but he’s got warmth enough for the two of them, can even feel a faint sheen of perspiration between his shoulder blades.

He shifts in the mattresses, and then says softly, “If you’ll pardon my invasion,” as he carefully curves his broad, gentle body across Jonathan’s back. He knows, though he wishes he didn’t, that he held Jonathan in his sleep: knows this from the way he woke up searching, from the scent that had imprinted itself firmly across the wolf’s senses—and he slides his arm gently across Jonathan’s hip, his forehead resting warm against the space between Jonathan’s shoulder blades. 

He is tense at first, afraid of being rejected, of making Jonathan uncomfortable; he is sure, beyond doubt, that Jonathan will not allow this for long when he is conscious. He knows he is nude, but despite his earlier unintended fantasies, he could not be less focused on his own wayward groin. The blankets are heavy and warm, and the mattress dips softly beneath him as he arranges his body around the protective curl of Jonathan’s with care. His nose is so close to Jonathan’s back that when he draws a soft breath he can smell again the scent of his skin on his shirt, his head spinning with it. Without the wolf’s brain below his to make sense of it he can only react to it as a man, and he decides that he would like very much to wake and sleep to this for a very, very long time, and he is quiet, feeling the cold of his beloved friend’s body leach into the warmth of his own broad chest, and hopes that it is enough, that _he_ is enough, and that Jonathan will allow him this simple, uncomplicated brand of care.

Half-expecting the embrace to come given the position he’d woken up in yesterday, Jonathan does not flinch away from the contact. He stills a moment, unsure of what to do as Barnabas moves in close to share his warmth, and Jonathan is grateful that the hand lands where it does instead of curling around his front. Barnabas spoke, and that deserves a response, he belatedly realizes. “By all means,” he settles for murmuring, and, “please refrain from touching my chest,” because that is a condition important to his comfort.

Now that Barnabas is offering, Jonathan wriggles about and repositions himself to get into as much contact with his skin as is mutually tolerable. When his arse touches against Barnabas’ groin, he, being a gentleman, readjusts himself to put a bit of space between the two. With his overall shivering, he doesn’t trust himself to keep his hips entirely still, and he neither wants to be an irritation to Barnabas nor give him any untoward ideas. This is the sharing of warmth, that’s all, and Barnabas may be nude but _he_ is still fully clothed, and Jonathan still has things to do like bandaging his wounds before they sleep and he doesn’t want to turn that into an embarrassing experience—for Barnabas. As a physician, he understands that erections can happen for a multitude of reasons and he feels somewhat confident in his ability to be around one and maintain his professional demeanour when he has done so before. Still, he’d rather not have to.

After he is settled in with Barnabas’ body behind him, Jonathan finds this both a familiar and a novel experience: familiar because it happened earlier today, but novel in that he, generally speaking, is the one in Barnabas’ position. Nearly all of Jonathan’s experiences with cuddling are with Jonah, so he finds it difficult to relate this to anything else. He is of a comparable height to Barnabas—taller, even, with him in boots and Barnabas with a limp—and Jonah Magnus far shorter than the both of them. He enjoys Jonah’s softness; his smooth, fair skin; likes being able to press kisses to the top of his head and to foster feelings of relaxation and safety, especially after an agreed-upon evening of exertion, pain, and perhaps a dash of terror. Barnabas has likely enjoyed the very same, Jonathan knows, though perhaps not with the same context—Barnabas, he imagines, must be a tender sort of lover. Jonathan thinks it pleasant now to lay with him with blankets pulled up to his chin, borrowing some of that tenderness for himself.

Barnabas tries not to think too much of this. He tries not to think about the way Jonathan’s body feels against his, sturdy shoulders fitted against his chest, dark hair straying onto the scant pillow that is the mattress, the proper pillow laying forgotten somewhere on the table, which may as well be a mile away for all the good it is doing them now. He feels the trembles under Jonathan’s skin, the tautness in the long muscle of his thigh at the tips of his fingers, and he firmly puts dreams he has no business dreaming out of his head. 

But his heart is more treacherous, its sweetness more insidious. He thinks, too, of Jonah, of stolen affection, of the round plump softness of him like a ginger tomcat purring rusty by the fire; he thinks of unguarded moments that seem a lifetime away, where all of Jonah’s freckled cream-and-rose warmth and the weight of that vivid, lucent gaze was for him. He doesn’t want to recall that, doesn’t want to compare the two, but it is inevitable, impossible not to.

Jonathan is different, but Barnabas finds the differences deeply appealing. If Jonah is a pampered house cat, Jonathan is something altogether else; they share similarities, certainly, but the difference is in tooth and claw, in the length of leg and the sharpness of instinct. His palm curves across the angle of hip, and he reverently chafes warmth back into the cloth-covered skin with an absent stroking motion, a soft shushing sound. He breathes in again, the scent of river-clean skin under grubby fabric heady and warm, and he swallows softly. Barnabas’ cheeks flush, a fresh curl of sweet heat, and he does not think of what he is doing before he presses his nose into the warm hollow between shoulder and neck. He exhales and attempts not to wonder if whatever long and lanky creature Jonathan is might purr too, given the right impetus.

“I ought to have warned you, last night,” he murmurs, voice very low and very steady—anything to stop himself overthinking. “Before I wrapped around you. Perhaps it was overstepping… Still, I think I am not your patient right this moment, but your friend—and as your friend, I’d like to admit I find this very comfortable indeed.” He smiles, and he wonders if Jonathan feels the curve of it against his shoulder.

Barnabas’ breath upon his neck inspires shivers anew in Jonathan; his pulse had started to slow, but that progress is arrested by the little whisper of an exhale. He doesn’t pull away or draw attention to his burgeoning excitement, but nor does he lean into it—simply allows Barnabas to say his piece and listens with an understanding patience.

“It’s fine,” Jonathan mumbles back. “We were both exhausted. And I didn’t mind.” Which isn’t _entirely_ the truth, but Barnabas can hardly be blamed for his sleeping actions. At any rate, Barnabas knows where not to touch him now, and that will do.

With an affirmative hum, Jonathan agrees with the sentiment of comfort. There are precious few people in the world who he trusts with his vulnerability, and he is coming to discover that Barnabas is one of them. They could have had this months ago—years, perhaps—before that first wolf had ever sunk its teeth into Barnabas. Would he have come to him then for help, Jonathan wonders? Could the attacks on livestock and the terror of the townsfolk been prevented, if Barnabas had sought his aid immediately? But it doesn’t do to dwell on hypotheticals, and he would much rather focus on the bed and the body-warmth and the peace after a long evening of effort.

Jonathan thinks on Barnabas’ demeanour, of all the times he has seemingly repressed his own desire; of the hints of disappointment he has shown when Jonathan established the boundary of professionalism—which he still considers important, to a point. But there is also a point where maintaining such a distance grows tedious and mutually unpleasant when there is no need. Barnabas said that he does not consider himself a patient at this moment. Perhaps it is time for Jonathan to be a little less of a physician too.

Quietly, Jonathan clears his throat and runs his tongue across his lips so that there will be no ambiguity in his statement. “If you would like to kiss me, then you may.” Were his cheeks not already fall- and fire-flushed, their burning would be a true torment. Despite this, he keeps his voice as composed as he can as he continues. “But I will not be disappointed if you would rather not. It’s an open offer.”

Barnabas had not allowed himself to consider the idea of kissing Jonathan before now. A kiss, perversely, seems more intimate than fantasizing about other things—perhaps it is the idea of exchanging breath, the thought of tasting Jonathan’s lips on his own, that had inspired such shyness toward the concept. Or perhaps it was that he was used to Jonah, who would do such acts of depravity to make a man catch fire with mortification, but would never allow Barnabas the simple sweetness of a kiss. He did not know what Jonah did with the others, but he had been refused so many times that he simply stopped asking. Now here is a rarer gift by far and Barnabas is almost too afraid _—almost—_ to take it.

He raises himself up on one elbow, just slightly, so that he may look down at Jonathan’s handsome face in the firelight. He watches the shadows dance and play across the familiar features, watches that hot scarlet flush colour Jonathan’s cheeks, the slide of tongue across lips, and he is struck with a yearning so powerful it levels him. The man beside him is, perhaps, not the man Barnabas would have thought he’d have craved with such fierceness, but he finds it is not such a sudden thing; perhaps it is a long-burning, slow fever that has crept up on him, only now surfacing in a flush of longing. He tips his head, his golden gaze searching for a moment, afraid to breathe—then brings his mouth to Jonathan’s in a soft, chaste press of lips.

It is innocent at first; reverent, tender. His uncertainty makes him cautious and his consideration makes him sweet. Jonathan is not the first man he has kissed, but certainly this seems to matter more, its weight and significance heavier. He raises a hand from under the blankets after a moment, like a man in a dream, to cradle long and sturdy fingers along the curve of Jonathan’s jaw, touching him like he is something precious, something heady and rare and adored.

He does not push or demand, only shapes his mouth against Jonathan’s with a plea for reciprocity—wonders, with a hazy sort of mystified longing, if his feelings are more transparent than ever.

Jonathan is unaccustomed to being kissed on the lips. Moreover, he is unaccustomed to kissing tenderly. When he made his invitation, he was allowing Barnabas to expand his portfolio of permissible small affections: to warm him under the touch of lips in addition to the stroking of his hips. Jonathan is bewildered, then, to hear Barnabas shift and rise and cover his mouth without preamble.

Knowing that he did, in a sense, ask for this keeps Jonathan from responding negatively to the contact. He settles onto his back so Barnabas does not need to strain himself to reach him, but aside from that, he hardly moves save for the rise and fall of his ribcage. Even under the weight of Barnabas’ hand upon his cheek, Jonathan is still, and remains so for a much-too-long moment. But Barnabas does no more than that and Jonathan is at a loss for why until his logic suggests to him that this is a show of politeness, and that it is up to _him_ to progress this further. Jonathan supposes he can handle that, since Barnabas’ courage is deserving of some physical reward.

Being the sort of man he is, Jonathan had neither the inclination nor the opportunity to partake in the sweetness of adolescent romance: that was the domain of fools and girls, and he, of course, was neither. Then came his time spent in the army and his discovery of his own shameful preferences: the thought of doing anything heated with a man as a woman repulsed him, but establishing his identity as a man himself didn’t make the idea seem quite so terrible. Despite his youthful desires, Jonathan had acted on none of them, because he already had enough to worry about with regards to his gender. Then university came, and city life, and he kept an ear out for the whispers and the rumours of where men who preferred the amorous company of other men came to gather. Jonathan is sure that some gentlemen appreciate gentleness, but he has never been much of one to lead with that: it is too effeminate for him, too likely to cast suspicions on the truth of his physical form, and so he saved that sort of thing for the aftermath—if there was one.

For that reason, Jonathan has been the initiator in nearly all of the kisses he’s ever shared. They have been for him a controlling thing; a means to stun and disarm his partner under a deluge of sensation. A distraction to allow him to remove a man’s neckwear and a precursor to the suckling bites that frequently followed. If he is the aggressor, then he doesn’t have to worry so much about what secrets wandering hands might find. And if he can overwhelm his partner enough, then perhaps they would be less preoccupied with wondering why he doesn’t remove his trousers.

Those experiences do not help him now, in the bed with Barnabas, who had agreed to none of that sort of business. Jonathan takes what he knows and softens it as much as he can: his defiling tongue becomes a questioning one, tracing the shape of Barnabas’ lips; his vicious teeth a satisfying pressure as he holds Barnabas’ bottom lip in his mouth. Settling for this is less unpleasant than he thought it’d be, Jonathan grows to discover, and the rumble through his chest and throat shows his contentment plainly.

For a long, vertiginous moment, with Jonathan’s mouth unmoving and uncertain beneath his own, Barnabas is sure he must have misread. He’s certain he must have misunderstood, ought to have restrained himself, ought to have played coy—but God, he is so weary of wrestling with the yarn-snarl of feelings, so tired of trying to untangle them with no success, chasing the ends round and round in his mind like the wolf might chase his tail. A kiss would put an end to the running, an end to worrying the edges of himself to fraying over what he meant to say, what he meant to do, what he _ought_ to do. Win or lose, the dice would have been rolled, the cards laid, the gamble a failure or a success.

Barnabas knows of himself that he is not a skilled gambler, knows he loses more often than he wins—knows, in the losing, how much of himself he gives away. In the moment it always seems right, the thrill of the bet, the excitement of it, but when Jonathan’s mouth softens beneath his own he thinks he may burst with the heady golden brightness of adrenaline and delight. His mouth opens, welcoming, and he shivers with it as they tangle together, teeth and tongue and lips. The taste of Jonathan is unlike any Barnabas has sampled before, and it leaves him breathless with a sudden sweet rush of desire. For the first time in what feels like days or perhaps weeks, even months, he is on one accord, mind and heart singing the same song—it’s uncomplicated, simple, easy, a tune he hopes he will not quickly forget. He will worry later about a thousand tiny cues he might have missed, a hundred questions he might have asked before taking such a liberty, but instead he chases the sweetness of it with his tongue, curls the tip of it along the line where teeth pin his lip with a conciliatory little hum that sounds, more than he’d like it to, like the whine of the wolf.

He realizes after a moment of this careful exploration, with a little bubble of delight, that Jonathan _does_ purr after all. His fingers gently stray to brush back Jonathan’s hair with a wistful, tender curve, before dropping to frame Jonathan at the shoulder, pressed into the mattress to keep him upright, and he almost doesn’t dare to breathe, only a soft airless gasp in through his nose. Barnabas does not want to stop, wants to feel the slow, wet, unhurried connection between them just a little bit longer, as if he could impress with just this the depths of his affection.

The kiss progresses at a languid pace, and though his heart pounds in his chest, Jonathan asks himself to relax, to savour this, and so he does. Barnabas isn’t going anywhere _—cannot_ go anywhere, his mordant mind supplies—and like this, toothless and human, he is safe in Jonathan’s company. Still, the anxiety of not performing intimacy well remains, and Jonathan does the same thing he did hours ago to soothe his own wandering mind and he cradles the back of Barnabas’ head, feeling the dampness of the hair in the spaces between his fingers. A bit of light scratching is something he can handle—the wolf seems to love it and he is relatively sure that the man must think likewise. He thinks of grasping that slippery hair to pull, to direct, to hinge Barnabas’ mouth open from sensation and surprise, but he does no such thing. Jonathan isn’t trying to rouse him. Just softness, that’s all, and a warming of the blood—and the kiss does do a spectacular job at that as the moments wear on.

Then comes the sensual slide of tongue on exploring tongue, and Jonathan nearly chokes on his sharp inhale: right, that’s a tad much, and too liable to tempt him into acts both salacious and unwise. He does the responsible thing and stops, keeping the parting graceful in pressing a kiss to Barnabas’ smooth cheek and another to his scratchy jaw: the growing beard may be an irritation to Barnabas, but Jonathan rather likes the ruggedness it lends to him. And he settles, marvelling at the view of all the little things made clear in the closeness: each fibre of dark lashes and each little freckle and birthmark. The shine of spit on his lip and the coaxing-open of pupils as Jonathan remembers to resume the scratching at his hairline.

“I wasn’t expecting you to lead with that,” Jonathan softly tells him, because the warm and trusting atmosphere lends itself well to confessions. “But I cannot complain.”

Barnabas has always been honest about his reactions and when fingers lace through dark, dense hair and settle against scalp and nails are applied gently, he feels as if he could melt, some subtle tension in shoulder and jaw softening. All too soon, though, the kiss is over, and when Jonathan’s mouth finds his cheek and the soft prickle of his jaw, his throat works in a soft, convulsive swallow. He cannot focus, does not particularly want to retrieve his scattered thoughts from the warm, intimate haze they’ve retreated into, but as he opens his eyes he finds himself looking at Jonathan as if he has never seen the man before. Perhaps he hasn’t—not like this, freshly-kissed in the firelit gloom of the cottage. He is distantly aware he must look a fool by comparison, rumpled and naked with his face still stained, but he cannot bring himself to care, not when he can feel his lips still tingling and warm, and his tongue touches the curve of his lower lip to chase the last of the taste. He feels like the wolf, craving touch, and leans into Jonathan’s hand. He cannot remember a time in recent months that he has felt this unselfconsciously _content._

“I am sorry if I got ahead of myself,” Barnabas says finally, the tilt of his head exposing the long line of his throat, chin and jaw peppered with fine glints of short dark hairs. It is as if some dam in him has broken, and having done so, he can no longer bear to relinquish the connection. Has he always been so lonely? He does not think so. “Mostly, I am sorry if I caused you any distress, certainly, although I don’t think I’m sorry I kissed you.” An unrepentant sparkle gleams in Barnabas’ eyes, and he continues. “I’ve wanted to for—well, for some time now. Perhaps I oughtn’t say so. Maybe I ought to hold my tongue.” He’s quiet a moment, and he raises a hand, carefully brushing fingertips across Jonathan’s shoulder, feeling the sturdy curve of it in a cautious caress. “But we are not green society boys looking for wives, and… you have been good to me, particularly tonight.”

He does not quite dare to meet Jonathan’s eyes, pinning his bright gaze on the dark serious arches of Jonathan’s brows, or perhaps a fraction higher, where an errant lock of Jonathan’s wet hair has formed a perfect, round curl against the striped ticking of the mattress. He finds, for the second time in as many days, that his ordinarily endless store of chatter has come up strangely empty. “I thought perhaps you might feel the same,” Barnabas says, after a moment. “It has only just occurred to me that you may have allowed it only out of _—politeness_ or some such thing.” Again, he is aware, though their bodies touch or nearly touch all along the length of limb and torso, of the space between his thoughts and Jonathan’s, a distance he cannot imagine being narrow enough to breach, not in a hundred years.

Jonathan’s confidence in his poise sours at the mention of ‘distress’—he thought he concealed any hint of that fairly well, all things considered. But Barnabas is perceptive in ways that he is not, nor particularly cares to learn; Barnabas is attentive to the feelings of others because he _cares,_ so much, about nearly all of his acquaintances and friends. He _likes_ to make other people happy—Jonathan has seen it many times before, in the ways his eyes light up when he makes people laugh, when he donates to those in need, when he is there with a cheering word to banish the weariness of a taxing day. In listening to him speak, Jonathan learns more of just how much Barnabas is invested in the relationship they share, emotionally speaking.

Jonathan is much more familiar with the languages of duty and of reciprocity than he is of love. An exchange of kindnesses, and service for service. The strengths of his attachments are measured in acts, in favours, in flattering word exchanged for amusing one. He may not be able to entirely understand people like Barnabas with their hearts full of compassion even when it is not rational, but he understands the value of friendship, and he understands the need for closeness, and he considers these precious things where Barnabas is concerned. His friend wants them, has admitted that he has wanted them for a long time, and Jonathan is coming to realize that he has been of a similar mind too.

Both his hands are free where Barnabas’ are not, and he cups his cheeks in both his palms and kisses him again, firm enough to chase away those preconceptions about politeness. This, Jonathan is familiar with, and he feels bolder for doing it. At this distance, it is difficult for them to look anywhere that isn’t directly in each others’ eyes. “I would very much like to do away with professional decorum and give you what comforts I can. Or, well, _most_ professional decorum—I cannot in good conscience allow you to have sex with your current injuries.” Though Jonathan huffs out a soft laugh, it’s unclear as to how much of a jest that actually was.

The sudden cradle of hands on Barnabas’ face startles him somehow more than the sudden sure press of Jonathan’s mouth on his own, but he still cannot entirely restrain the soft, surprised sound. Part of him had been half-sure he would never have the chance again, and he would have been willing to give up such ambitions if it meant not ruining a friendship he had found to be unexpectedly sweet despite the bitter. He cannot imagine, even now, how someone could meet him where he is instead of expecting him to stretch further than he knows how to.

Still, when their mouths part again, Barnabas finds himself blinking and staring into those steady, quiet dark eyes, momentarily utterly arrested by them. There is a soft set to his own gaze, gratitude and cautious hope carried on the curve of a gap-toothed puppy-cheerful grin. The complex tangle of his emotions has not unwound, but it is easy enough to put the knots down, let them be subsumed at least momentarily by touch and by the familiarity of Jonathan’s laugh. “Mostly, the comfort I wish for is just this,” he confesses with a chuckle. “Closeness. Not being afraid to accidentally show all my cards, to say something foolish and artless and wind up irretrievably in your poor graces. In other things, well, you have made yourself my doctor. Surely I must trust you when it comes to the state of my wounds.”

He is glad to settle back into the comfortable, easy banter to which he is accustomed, to set aside the uneasy subject of his own feelings in favour of immediacy. “That is not to say that I would not want to—that I wouldn’t go to bed with—God!” His expression twists with distaste at himself, a grimace narrowing his eyes and baring his teeth briefly. “How do you bear my clumsiness? I just _say_ and _do_ things—” Barnabas finds himself wishing for the wolf’s instinctive, wordless boldness, shameless and unambiguous. He so often finds himself with his foot in his mouth or his jaw hanging open while rubbish spills out. “Perhaps,” he says as soon as he dares, “we may revisit the subject when I am healed. If you wish, that is.” Colour is creeping from his cheeks all the way out to the tips of both ears.

“It’s endearing,” Jonathan reassures him. He said it to be nice, but as the words carry back to his own ears, he comes to realize the volume of the truth he finds in that. The foolishness is charming, and always has been—Jonathan thinks it a refreshing change from the distinguished gentlemen they keep company with. Being around Barnabas chases away some of the sober solemnity that clings to him from the workday—without a friend like him, his soul would surely be more cutting; more morbid. Presently it is light and unconcerned by earthly troubles or by obligations—save for one.

Jonathan makes a quiet request for Barnabas to move so that he may rise, and he does so when his friend allows it. The entire point of crawling under the covers with Barnabas was to warm himself enough to competently handle his bandages, and that has been accomplished with flying colours. Jonathan is quick to retrieve them as well as Barnabas’ drawers, and moments later he is kneeling on the bed again, moving the blankets aside, and repositioning Barnabas so that he may access his injuries. “I think that waiting to discuss that possibility later would be best,” and that is certainly a thing to say when looking upon the gentleman’s supine form with his knee drawn up, reaching between his legs to dress his injury. “But it’s... good to be aware of your interest. Or potential interest.” he awkwardly adds, resolutely looking at Barnabas’ thigh and _only_ his thigh.

Feeling light—Jonathan thinks him _endearing,_ Barnabas thinks with a bubble of effervescent relief—he obligingly shifts to free Jonathan from the blankets and lets himself be maneuvered into a more suitable position for bandaging. He is a broad, gangling specimen of a creature on his back in the tumble of blankets, and he lets himself relax a little. When directed, he hooks one hand across his knee to hold it upright, making it easier for Jonathan to access the wound.

After a moment’s consideration, he laughs softly, a sheepish little rumble in his chest. “You _must_ know my interest has been more than _potential_ by now,” he says plaintively, watching Jonathan’s clever hands wind the strips of cloth into place. It’s less painful than it had been, and Barnabas only hisses his discomfort twice as the cloth tightens down on the long muscle of his thigh. Mostly, he is quiet, watching Jonathan, and gradually his gaze settles on Jonathan’s shoulders. He wonders for longer than he would like to admit why the shirt looks wrong, and it takes him an embarrassingly long moment to realize that Jonathan is wearing his shirt inside out, the felled seams and incorrect collar showing conspicuously on the body-grubby fabric. Barnabas finds himself briefly mystified. Surely it must be uncomfortable, he thinks to himself, to wear the outside of the shirt against his skin, better perhaps for Jonathan than going without, but it can’t be _much_ better. He considers keeping his mouth shut, but only briefly, before he realizes he has a solution.

“I see your shirt’s inside out,” he says, to distract himself from the tremble in his thigh caused by the effort of keeping it helpfully vertical. “If you might be more comfortable in a cleaner one, you’re welcome to wear the one I brought with me for the ride home.” He tips his head, running a measuring gaze across the width of Jonathan’s torso. Barnabas is enough of a dandy and has enough skill with a needle to at least think he has a keen eye for clothing and how it ought to fit a body. “You and I are about of a size,” he says reasonably, “and it ought to fit you very well indeed. It’s not as if we can get it very dirty curling up to sleep.”

Jonathan is unaccustomed to being viewed as a desirable person, though he is sure that it must occasionally happen. It can be so very difficult to sort out the difference between friendliness and flirtation, and he chooses to interpret it as the former the vast majority of the time, given that is the appropriate thing to do at work and that he isn’t terribly interested in what any of the women in his acquaintance may be offering in their roundabout, subtle ways. In spaces where queer desires may be hesitantly spoken, other peoples’ fantasies about him are almost certainly based in inaccurate assumption, because he has never met a gentleman who was able to know what sort of man he is from simply meeting him—aside from Jonah. And even _with_ Jonah, his sauciness is nothing remarkable or unique: Jonathan has watched him turn that excited, scheming gaze upon many a gentleman in their company. In their early days together there were hints of possessiveness here and there, but Jonathan soon learned to tamp down on those impulses, for it is in Jonah’s nature to crave a full range of experiences and to try to deny him that is a sure way to earn his ire. Not wanting to fuel any feelings of jealousy or inadequacy, Jonathan isn’t in the habit of asking about Jonah’s other lovers but Jonah likes to gossip regardless, so he knows a little of Barnabas and the sorts of things the two of them get up to.

Barnabas may know much more about him than most and has experience with at least one man of Jonathan’s particular kind, but he isn’t the same as Jonah with regards to his self-image and the range of activities he feels comfortable participating in. He’d made attempts, of course, with Jonah being a trusted and an understanding partner, but he simply could not get past his mental block to derive any enjoyment from some of their experiments. This is precisely what Jonathan is concerned about. His anxieties intensify upon noticing that Barnabas’ eyes are on his chest and he is speaking about his shirt—his intentions are innocent enough, Jonathan wants to believe, but it doesn’t stop his skin from crawling given where his mind is at.

“I probably would,” Jonathan grudgingly agrees. It is a kind offer, Jonathan tells himself. It is a kind offer from a kind friend, who has shown his respect for what boundaries Jonathan laid out for him. By the time he has sat Barnabas up and finished wrapping his other wound, he has reached the decision that he _needs_ to change clothes if he is to have any chance of comfort in sleeping. So he gets up, crosses to the trunk where Barnabas’ clothes are stored, and insists that Barnabas “look away,” in a tone much curter than he had intended. Jonathan keeps his back to Barnabas and his arms as close to his sides as often as is feasible in the changing. The new shirt is too broad in the shoulder for him and the seams sit awkwardly low, but Jonathan prefers that to being wrapped up in clothing too tight for him. He channels his residual bitterness into giving his old shirt a sharp snap of a shake and drapes it over the bed frame to air. A wince at the sound, and a sigh. He takes the chance to clean his glasses on fresh fabric and retrieves the pillow before he comes back to bed.

“Would you like to be helped into your drawers again?” Jonathan asks, trying for calm. “Or would you rather go without?”

Barnabas would never admit to it, but often enough he forgets entirely that neither Jonah nor Jonathan has a body that is like his own. His dalliances with those of his own perceived gender have been largely limited, aside from brief, discreet things with understanding members of Jonah’s extended circle, or the endless and fruitless chase for Jonah’s affection. Beyond this, his experience has been all one-offs, meaningless and pointless, ever mindful of the reach of law and neighbourly concern for ‘decency’. Still, the characteristics Jonah so disdains in himself other than their use as a most potent and tender weapon hold their own quiet fascination for Barnabas.

He has dreamed before, with a distant and half-numb ache, of having some of the same softness his friends so ruthlessly bind flat. It would be a lie indeed to say that Barnabas himself has not stood in silent self-appraisal before a mirror and imagined, like a man born without some vital sense, what it might be like to have such a tender curve where he has only flat and fine-furred planes. He has wondered, with a peculiar anodyne curiosity, what it would be like to have such a secret of his own, to be soft in all the places he is not, and found in himself a faint and curious ache like a missing thing, the void where a tooth or a limb ought to fit. But no one has ever asked, and Barnabas has never bothered to confront it with any seriousness in himself. Besides, he now has his own inconvenient and dangerous secret, one with vicious fangs and eyes like golden lanterns. He is triply-damned if he dares, and so he simply does not dare. Jonah may know something of these dreams, but if he does he has not made them plain. Barnabas would have denied it to the last even if he had.

Still, he rolls obligingly to the side when Jonathan indicates he wishes for privacy and presses the back of his hand to his tired eyes. He has long practice in not taking sharp and snappish tones to heart, and he listens to the soft rustle of fabric, to the near-silent pad of Jonathan’s feet on the floor, to the whispered crackle of the fire. The vigorous sound of the shirt being shaken out makes him relax fractionally, and when he is spoken to from close by again, he sits up again, blinks the blur from his eyes, and smiles at Jonathan. “There now. I hope you’ll be more comfortable this way. In that vein, I think we’d both be more comfortable sleeping with my drawers _on,_ given my—er, nighttime rolling-about.” Barnabas gives a half-hearted laugh and then clarifies, “the hugging,” as if Jonathan isn’t well aware. He shifts and scoots back to the edge of the mattresses, and cautiously manages to get himself upright on both feet, though he thinks wistfully it is much easier when he has three other good legs with which to do so.

With an understanding nod, Jonathan does what he can in supporting Barnabas while he dresses him, and between this being the second time he’s done this and all of the necessary nudity in general, it goes uneventfully. Laces are tied, buttons are fastened, and Barnabas is delicately lowered back down and given a pillow to support his head. A mug of water is placed on the floor within his reach and Jonathan refills a cup for himself, downing half straightaway. He empties and turns his coat largely inside-out to spare the ticking contact with any of the mud or blood that had found their way onto the fabric—Jonathan plans on spot-cleaning it overnight, when there will be little else to do but to stay put. The trousers and the spectacles come off, and both are left folded on the table. Then, sitting in bed, he removes his stockings, whereupon he tells Barnabas, “Thank you for lending me the shirt. That was very considerate of you.”

Jonathan sets the blankets right and climbs in beside Barnabas, bracketing him between his front and the fire. Barnabas requested the comfort of closeness and that is what he gives, on his terms this time: hips flush to hips, chest close enough for the fabric to whisper across his back, a knife-calloused hand resting by turns upon Barnabas’ hip or on his belly. There is not enough hair down by his navel for Jonathan to card his fingers through, but he finds the wiry texture calming enough under his fingertips.

For a number of minutes, they do not speak, and for a number of minutes, Jonathan tries not to think about his earlier distress. But he knows that the longer he ruminates on his, the more his insecurity is going to sprout from the lifetime’s worth of soil he’s been trying to bury this particular problem under. Gently, tenderly, Jonathan kisses Barnabas on the shoulder to get his attention. “I am not Jonah,” he begins, grateful that he doesn’t have to look at anything but the back of Barnabas’ blurry head. “That is to say, I have a different relationship with my body than he does with his. As he’s explained it to me, he would _prefer_ that things be otherwise, but he doesn’t mind engaging with what he has. I’m... not like that. I very much dislike anything that forces me to acknowledge my sex.” His hand raises to grasp Barnabas around the upper arm, holding on lightly but ready to tighten his grip in case Barnabas tries to roll over. He would prefer not to be seen tormented and misty-eyed. “That is why I asked you not to touch my chest. That is why... I find some bedroom activities too distressing to partake in.”

Barnabas is simply glad that Jonathan is more comfortable—had it been only him in the bed he might have gone without his undergarments, simply in deference to the wounds, but by the time he has drunk most of his water and Jonathan has joined him back in the bed, Barnabas has settled in. Still, now he is warm beside the fire, now he is the one being held, and he is not certain what the soft and peculiar feeling in his chest is and is unwilling to worry overmuch about the naming of it. Safety, perhaps. Certainly contentment. Affection. He is glad to let the quiet stretch out, his lashes heavy as he gazes dreamingly into the hypnotic depths of the flames, his belly warm where Jonathan’s fingers touch. It is at once like and unlike being petted as the wolf; there is less fur and more skin-to-skin contact, and he can feel, with a comfortable and body-focused awareness, Jonathan’s breaths stirring the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. He feels so relaxed he thinks he might melt into the mattress, the scant curve of his hip and the broader one of his shoulder cradled in ticking thick enough and stuffing full enough that he could forget the existence of the floor below entirely in his weariness.

It is from this near-floating half-doze that Barnabas is stirred by the press of kiss against his skin, and he is called back to his faculties to listen to Jonathan with only a quiet affirmative hum to let him know he’s present and focused. When Jonathan’s hand moves from belly to arm he misses the warmth of it, but he does not try to roll. He can hear in Jonathan’s voice the control, the composure, and from the subject matter, he knows well enough that this must be hard for him to say. So Barnabas simply continues looking straight ahead, lips pinched, the lower one pinned in his teeth as he tries to wrap his head around Jonathan’s words. He thinks perhaps he knew this in part—he is familiar with Jonah, familiar with the way his oldest friend reacts beneath his hands, the way he will move or speak when he wishes Barnabas to do or say something. Jonathan is different. He cannot recall ever being this careful or this uncertain with Jonah. He thinks again of Jonah as a round loaf of a ginger cat baring its soft belly to bait a man’s hands, safe in its knowledge of its own teeth and claws should it come to that, and he does not think he would ever dare to expect the same softness from Jonathan—though Jonathan is a man with more frightening claws by far in Barnabas’ experience.

He waits until he is certain Jonathan is finished speaking, weighing his thoughts for clarity, for veracity, before opening his mouth. _Tread lightly, Bennett,_ he counsels himself.

“That makes sense,” Barnabas says softly, and he does not try to turn over, though he wants dearly to comfort Jonathan. He thinks perhaps Jonathan would not accept his comfort right now anyway. “I would never wish to cause you any distress, most especially in such a way as that. It is true I have only Jonah to refer to for what you might like in… in that capacity. But if that’s entirely incorrect, then you must know I am willing to cast it out entirely and start from the most basic fundamentals.” His tone is gentle, for all its bleary huskiness, and entirely earnest. “I am certain I shall make mistakes, but if you are willing to teach me what I ought to do I think you’ll find me a most willing pupil.” He smiles, though he does not think Jonathan will see. “If you wish to, that is. If you’d rather avoid sex entirely, then you have only to say so and you’ll silence my asking until or unless you say otherwise. But I am willing to try whatever things you’d find most agreeable.”

Barnabas’ ardent speech works wonders for soothing Jonathan’s troubled mind: he had not expected a reaction this overwhelmingly positive and supportive. He’d expected questions, disappointment, a grudging acceptance, perhaps—not this. Not a friend willing—no, not willing, _glad—_ to patiently wait at the boundary, there for him if Jonathan would ever like to cross. Jonathan rests his forehead against the back of Barnabas’ neck, huffing the breath of a laugh against him. “You are a good man, Mr. Bennett.” He deserves to hear that. He probably doesn’t get told that often enough by people who genuinely mean it.

Jonathan takes that feeling of reassurance and uses it to slide his grip down the length of Barnabas’ arm to find the back of his hand and entwine their fingers together. Jonathan shifts on the mattress to ensure his further comfort, and his lips brush against Barnabas’ back while he settles. “I feel as though it is important to let you know that—I wouldn’t want you to have your heart set on something that I’m incapable of doing. Or... unwilling is the better word to use there, I suppose.”

Hearing it said aloud, Jonathan thinks about the general impression he must be creating: that he is something to be handled delicately, like some sheltered maiden on her wedding night. That does not at all resemble the truth of the matter when he _has_ attempted things before and _knows_ that they are not for him. With a sigh, Jonathan makes a try for painting a clearer picture. “I don’t know. Being the active partner is easier for me—touching, rather than being touched. That’s what most of my past encounters have been like.”

The praise warms Barnabas in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before, like someone has opened his chest and nestled something there for him to keep always, spreading a subtle sweet warmth. Praise is hard to come by—especially praise for something he said that came out right, for a change. He smiles, a soft and secret thing, faintly flustered, and gives another soft hum, afraid to acknowledge the words lest they be revoked. He feels as if his heart may melt as Jonathan’s fingers lace into his, warm and firm and callused; their hands fold together as if they belong that way, palms and digits cradled together, simultaneously holding and held. It feels at once both new and familiar, and Barnabas occupies himself wholeheartedly with learning the contours of fingers and palm, stroking the pad of his thumb along the edge of Jonathan’s forefinger, circling gently at the knuckle, testing against the edge of a nail. He can feel the warmth of Jonathan’s face against his back, the tenderness of his lips, and the soft low resonance of Jonathan’s voice against him feels like a home Barnabas has never before come to, but one in which he knows his place.

“This isn’t—well, won’t be—my first time under a man,” Barnabas points out reasonably after a longer-than-usual beat, occupied as he is with the comfort of his thoughts. “Touching _or,_ er, receiving. Whether you’re incapable or unwilling doesn’t matter much to me—it’s all much the same in the end.” He pauses again, displeased with the words he chose, then murmurs, squinting slightly into the violet-and-blue heart of the flames, where firewood is mellowing and rounding into light-rimmed coals, “I don’t know if I mean that in the way it came out, only that if you don’t wish to do it, I don’t want to do it _with_ you.” He laughs, feeling almost drunk with relief and intimacy, and then raises their joined hands, pressing a careful, chaste kiss to Jonathan’s knuckles. “Though I suspect there are plenty of things you can teach me. Jonah has had stories, after all.” He leaves out the fact that sometimes these stories are meant to inspire Barnabas to jealousy, he thinks. He wonders if Jonah knows they have been part of the initial inspiration for his more intimate fantasies, the ones he doesn’t dare speak aloud or even acknowledge fully. “Though he has a taste for more… _exotic_ delights than I sometimes. Still, I’m hardly a frightened, breakable virgin myself. But I’ll try most anything once.” He pauses, then, “Twice if I’m unsure.”

“That’s certainly true,” Jonathan says to more than one of those things. When he checks what Barnabas just said against what he knows of Jonah’s past affairs, he chuckles, flustered, at his realization. “Ha, you’ve seen him after the cane, haven’t you. All striped up like a tiger.” Not wanting Barnabas to feel neglected in talking about someone else, he gives his hand a reassuring squeeze. “Yes, that is a mutually agreed-upon activity. We’ve had plenty of discussions. And playing the harsh disciplinarian is by no means a prerequisite for my enjoyment,” Jonathan jokes, his heart warming to light, heating to joyful.

Something about that funny little chuckle makes Barnabas feel soft—Jonathan’s happiness is potent and infectious. He does not want to be distracted from it, but his traitorous mind gives him Jonah again, visiting him languid in the aftermath of some great exertion; the memory of fading red stripes marching with military precision over all that fair, freckled flesh. He already feels a little out of his depth, struggling with a sideways lurch of worry jutting rudely into his chest before he catches himself back up. “A good thing you’re not all discipline,” Barnabas banters back. “I’ve not worn stripes like that since my schoolboy days! I’m not so certain they’d look as nice on me now as they did then.”

Jonathan resolutely tries not to hold that image in his mind for too long, lest it tempt him into violence. He focuses instead on the soothing physicality of it all, finding the solidness of Barnabas’ frame to be a reassuring constant; a sturdy presence, much like how the wolf was beneath his roaming hands. Here, his lips do a bit of roaming across Barnabas’ shoulders and his neck, seeing if he will respond as well to these kisses as he did to the others. It is easier, he finds, to be affectionate with Barnabas when he has the opportunity to do it on his own terms—the man deserves it for all the kind words he’s spoken. “It is good to know that you have some experience.” Jonathan’s teeth come into contact with Barnabas’ collarbone on accident: the second time, when they rake across the side of his neck, it is entirely deliberate. Nothing ventured, nothing gained—and Jonathan is keen to banish the last of those unfortunate ideas about his frailty.

Barnabas’ playful tongue is stilled by the soft, slow wandering peppering of kisses. At first Barnabas is a little afraid to react, holding his breath as if Jonathan might decide it’s best to leave such things for another morning—but he cannot stop the shivering frisson of gooseflesh that raises all the fine hairs from the small of his back to the nape of his neck and pebbles his skin with texture, or the liquid flush of heat that slides, drop by drop, down the ladder of his spine and settles at the base of it. His head tips forward in automatic welcome, and he exhales, distracted, unfocused. A laugh bubbles up out of Barnabas, a goosey little shivering sound. Faced away from Jonathan, he cannot reciprocate, only experience, and his hand tightens with surprise the first time teeth meet skin.

“Experience,” he blurts helpfully at the purposeful nip, “yes exactly!” But this is something different from what he has played at before. He is suddenly intimately aware of how close Jonathan is to him, the not-quite-physical press of his presence even where they do not touch, the puff of his breath against Barnabas’ stubbled jaw; he is suddenly conscious of the heady implications of Jonathan’s words. A _firm hand_ indeed, Barnabas thinks, and doesn’t dare to delve further into the thought. It doesn’t matter, though, because his pulse is already fluttering light and quick at the base of his throat and his drawers feel a fraction tighter than they were before.

The tight control that Barnabas has over his subtle physical reactions gives Jonathan a tempting challenge in finding all the ways by which he may break Barnabas’ composure down. He wants to learn them, needs to catalogue them, and is having theories and ideas aplenty about methods he would love to try. Physical pleasure is all well and good, but Jonathan loves his own excited heartbeat and scheming mind also.

“Forgive me if I’m being too bold,” Jonathan murmurs up close to his jaw, “but you seem the sort who might have an appreciation for a firm hand. A bit of direction, from time to time.”

“I’m afraid I can’t deny that even if I wanted to,” Barnabas says, sounding just slightly winded. He’s glad of the layers of fabric between them—it’s a dangerous edge he’s skirting indeed, and he doesn’t move, afraid of giving a reason for it to stop. “And I do not think you too bold for saying so. Though I ought to warn you that whether it was your intention or not to give me all manner of—of thoughts, Jonathan, I should confess you’ve done it anyway.” His cheeks and ears are red-hot with a flush, his head tipping toward Jonathan.

Jonathan uses Barnabas’ distraction to free his hand wrapped up in his, and he slides it downwards to hold him securely by the hip. “Good,” he says, and he cannot help but rock against him to ensure his grip is solid. For a moment, just a moment, Jonathan’s breath catches in his throat—barely a gasp at all. He recovers himself to add, “I did tell you that I would prefer you to have _accurate_ thoughts.”

Caught up in the mood’s momentum, Jonathan takes yet another liberty in kissing, open-mouthed and filthy, low on Barnabas’ neck. He isn’t sure what possesses him to settle his teeth over the skin, or what motivates him to seal his lips against it and suck, beckoning for Barnabas’ blood. A muted echo of the mutilation he’d inflicted on the deer; a mark, a _claim._ Wolves talk with teeth, and he is a hunter himself.

Barnabas’ hand, once bereft of Jonathan’s, searches momentarily for something to hold onto—his fingers curl uselessly into a fold of blanket as he feels Jonathan’s grasp his hip, feels the way Jonathan’s body moves against his, jarring his wounded leg and bringing a fresh, writhing little spike of pain from it. Barnabas finds his own voice wrung out of him in sympathy: is Jonathan walking the same narrow and perilous ledge that Barnabas has found himself on? “I’m an imaginative man,” he finds himself babbling, useless, glib, as though he’s not flushed with a sudden desire so powerful he immediately sets the same hooks and reins into it that he does on the wolf’s wants: they are new restraints, and he does not know how strong they are, only that when Jonathan’s mouth settles on his skin again there is not _time_ for him to still the sudden shuddering jerk of hip and thigh in answer, the way he twitches back against Jonathan minutely. The wet, slick sounds of kisses put his body in mind of something soft and needy, of a fruit ripe for the tear of teeth, and the long muscles of his thighs clamp tight, another hitching shudder dragged out of him at the hot, bright pleasure-pain of teeth and suction against that sensitive spot.

This far into the morning he would like to think himself distant from the wolf—but it understands this much better than he does: hunger, the desire to mark something indelibly, to leave one’s name on something in a way that will last. The fierce pull of lips and tongue and teeth is unbearably erotic, and Barnabas finds himself paralyzed, scruffed like a misbehaving hound, every inch of him alive with prickling hairs, nipples drawn tight into hard, dark little buds, arousal attempting to carve space for itself out of the fabric of his drawers. He is only just barely aware of it as a growl of frustrated want wrenches itself up out of the pit of his belly, and he wants to blame the wolf for the bestial sound, but it’s only him in his head this morning—only Barnabas and a set of instincts he doesn’t want to claim as his own, because that would mean that after everything he and the wolf were one, unified as much without the moon as he ever was with it.

It takes Jonathan a time to return to his senses. He remembers what he said about not having sex with Barnabas, because he is a wounded man and it would be a misstep to interfere with the healing process in any way. Besides, Barnabas is likely in pain from his injury and not saying so, and that would surely detract from his enjoyment. Jonathan is having a similar experience, being in bed without his usual accoutrements: concealing clothing, prosthetics, and the like. The overall experience would be far better delayed.

And so, reaching a decision, Jonathan draws away. He licks his gums, half-expecting to encounter the taste of blood, but finds none there. That all sits in the bruise-to-come, but for now, it is only a misshapen circle of feverish red. Looking upon it, Jonathan admits, “I’m sorry. I’m being cruel again, aren’t I,” sheepish and shaky with his guilty amusement.

Once that mouth has left his skin Barnabas’ good sense is lost for lingering moments afterward, and he can feel the thrum of his tripping heart in the tender bruise left behind, in the sockets of his eyes and the hand fisted in the sheets; he feels his pulse singing in the wounds on hip and thigh, and between them, half-hard and trapped, in his cock. _“Fuck,”_ Barnabas says with feeling, once he can summon words again. “Yes, that was—” he pauses to seek the word, but in his fluster he cannot find a better phrase than the one Jonathan offered _“—cruel_ , but I’ll thank you for your cruelty, if you promise to do it again.”

A growl is pleasant, and a curse even better. It makes Jonathan wonder how bestial Barnabas’ reactions would be in the city, in his bed, in the dimness of the new moon. He wonders if he could frustrate Barnabas to the point of lashing out and biting; wonders if he could make him whimper like the wolf had when denied food. The latter, at least, seems likely given how wound-up the gentleman is over one little love-bite. Jonathan finds that unbearably precious, and he cannot resist pressing a feather-light kiss to the abused spot.

“No,” Jonathan says, darkly laughing at his torment. “Not tonight. I have to leave you with _something_ to look forward to.” Belatedly, he realizes that it is morning, but he doesn’t bother correcting himself. His grip loosens on Barnabas’ hip, but he does not let it go: it’s a good place to hold, Jonathan thinks, and thinks too about how he could gladly grow accustomed to laying here like this.

A fine, unrestrained shudder ripples through Barnabas and he lets out a sigh gusty and deep enough to make the flames in the hearth curve away from it. The denial ought to sting, but the way Jonathan laughs, the feel of his hand familiar and steady on the curve of a hip, makes it a perverse little delight of its own, something to tuck away and remember over the time they will spend apart. The thought of parting is not a sweet one, either, but Barnabas has long come to the conclusion he will spend most of his nights alone. He is not the sort of man to take a wife, and confirmed bachelorhood has treated him well enough until now. He suspects the other side of his bed back at home will feel very empty indeed.

“I assure you,” he says with faintly-breathless amusement, “there is plenty I can look forward to from here. You’ve given me much to think about.” The tension in his body subsides by degrees, his heartbeat slowing from gallop to canter to trot, and Barnabas sets about the task of resolutely ignoring the taut ache between his thighs. “I think I have a much more accurate picture by which to fantasize now, thank you.”

Jonathan hums his approval to that, and he focuses in on the texture of the fabric underneath his hand as he lets his own excitement slowly settle. The exertion of the night and the residual fatigue from the one before are beginning to catch up with him: he has done more travelling on foot since coming out here than he would typically do in a week—perhaps even in a month. And there will be more to do tomorrow, between cooking and cleaning and maintenance on the space—Barnabas needs his bed rest and will not be able to assist except to offer company. A small part of him disapproves of how neglected the cottage is in general, although he knows he shouldn’t expect much from a gentleman of means.

When Jonathan becomes aware that he’s been dozing for a while now, he rolls over to have a sip of water, then settles himself in to sleep like yesterday, with his coat under his cheek, facing away from Barnabas. “I wouldn’t mind if you held me again,” he mumbles in sleepy invitation.

The heavy warmth of his friend’s hand at his hip and the sound and feel of Jonathan behind him combine; his nerves are still tingling, snapping with interest and desire, and his groin hasn’t quite settled itself with the idea that it won’t be getting attention today. He is weary—between wounds and rampant emotion, he ought to be worn to threads—but restless longing keeps his senses sharp long after Barnabas has decided he would rather be sleeping. He tightens his senses down to the smell of Jonathan against him, river-clean and warm and familiar, down to the sound of his breathing as it smooths and slows with dozing, to the way, if he pays attention, that he can feel the tension go out of the hand on his hip, each articulation and tension softening. It takes time, but with this almost-meditative contemplation of each point of contact between them, Barnabas imposes what is left of his will on his wayward body, and his arousal subsides.

He misses Jonathan when the contact is broken, but he too downs a long drink of water, and shifts in an attempt to find his comfort, lifting the plane of his hip to find a cooler spot on the mattress. He lays in the quiet as Jonathan settles, eyes closed against the sunshine streaming softly through the window, and he is finding himself still frustratingly wakeful until he hears that warm and drowsy invitation. His heart skips a beat, and he can’t help making the silliest, most besotted smile. He is glad Jonathan cannot see the look on his face as he rolls over too, moulds his body against the shape of Jonathan’s, comfortably. He is careful to position himself slightly deeper in the bed, so his arm wraps around waist and hip instead of chest, and his nose nuzzles softly against the exposed spot just above the collar of Jonathan’s borrowed shirt. He lets out a soft, deep breath. “This all right?” he asks, feeling the tightness in his muscles, the taut wakefulness behind his breastbone and in the space between his joints and in the dark hollow places behind his eyes, and in its wake a warm liquid relief as all of this begins to melt away. It is as if Jonathan himself is made of something sweet and soporific, both the hot vivid bite of whiskey and the mellow golden warmth it leaves behind.

Holding this pleasant comparison in his head, Barnabas feels Jonathan relaxing into sleep before his friend can even respond, hears his breaths slow and smooth, and he cannot help a drowsy, contented hum. It is more comfortable than it has any right to be, and after a brief time of savouring the warm body tucked so cozily flush with his own, he sleeps too.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fantastic art done by [idlecreature](https://idlecreature.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> **Content warnings:**  
>  Gender dysphoria and internalized sexism. Mentions of corporal punishment and mild homophobia. [return to top]


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